Art After Dark: Remain by Hoda Afshar
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In the final Winter month of August, the Bunjil Place Outdoor Screen program ART AFTER DARK is proud to present the mesmerising and captivating work ‘Remain’ by award-winning photographer and filmmaker Hoda Afshar.
Remain
Remain (2018) addresses invisible histories through the contentious interlinked topics of Australian border protection and the human rights of asylum seekers. Filmed on the infamous Manus Island, an immigration detention facility in Papua New Guinea, the work delivers a depiction of the prolonged mistreatment of detainees.
Remain weaves a haunting narrative as the camera follows a group of stateless men who remain on Manus Island despite the centre’s closure in October 2017. Through a series of intersecting stories, each recounts the violence and hopeless desperation they have experienced, including their observations of murder, riot, and suicide. One such voice is Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian writer who recites poetry. Another man vocalises a palpable sense of stripped identity and purpose through song. These deeply confronting stories are dramatically contrasted by the seemingly idyllic tropical environment in which the work is set among the lush, tropical rainforests. Described as a ‘green hell’ by one of the protagonists, the men are imprisoned in a perpetual state of limbo.
Through a re-thinking of the documentary form, the artist’s collaborative two-channel video enables the revelation of concealed histories and repressed voices. Unflinchingly political, Remain draws attention to the ramifications of national policy on the human rights of the individual.
- Hoda Afshar
About Hoda Afshar
Hoda Afshar was born in Tehran, Iran (1983), and is now based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. She completed a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art– Photography in Tehran, and her Ph.D. thesis in Creative Arts at Curtin University. Hoda began her career as a documentary photographer in Iran in 2005, and since 2007 she has been living in Australia where she practices as a visual artist and also lectures in photography and fine art. Hoda is represented by Milani Gallery in Brisbane, Australia.
Through her art practice, Hoda explores the nature and possibilities of documentary image-making. Working across photography and moving-image, she considers the representation of gender, marginality, and displacement. In her work, she employs processes that disrupt traditional image-making practices, play with the presentation of imagery, or merge aspects of conceptual, staged, and documentary photography.
Hoda’s work has been widely exhibited both locally and internationally and published online and in print. In 2021, her first monograph Speak the Wind was published by MACK in London. Her work is also part of numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, UQ Art Museum, Art Gallery of South Australia, MUMA Collection, Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery of Western Australia and more. Throughout her career, Hoda has been shortlisted for many prestigious art awards, and in 2015 she won Australia’s National Photographic Portrait Prize, in 2018 won Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art, Australia, and in 2021 she won the people’s choice award of the Ramsay Art Prize, Art Gallery of South Australia. She was also selected as one of the top eight young Australian artists to exhibit at Primavera 2018 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Hoda is a member of ‘Eleven’, a new collective of contemporary Muslim Australian artists, curators, and writers whose aim is to disrupt the current politics of representation and hegemonic discourses.
Header Image: Remain, Hoda Afshar (2018). Still from digital video.
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