Talk: Hoda Afshar and Nikos Papastergiadis

Image: Hoda Afshar, from the series [Speak the Wind] (2015-2020). Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

Image: Hoda Afshar, from the series Speak the Wind (2015-2020). Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

When

03 May 2022

Tuesday, 6:30-8pm (AEST)

Venue

Monash Gallery of Art [i]
860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill
Tue – Fri, 10am – 5pm
Sat – Sun, 10am – 4pm

Themes

Nature
Society

Accessibility

Wheelchair access

Price

Free, bookings required

Join Hoda Afshar and Nikos Papastergiadis in conversation within the exhibition Speak the wind at MGA. Surrounded by Afshar’s images, the pair may unpick their shared interests in migration, diaspora and the turbulence and complexity of cultural identity.

Winds have shaped the islands off the southern coast of Iran, in the Strait of Hormuz, and over many centuries, tides have brought to these islands an ancient and complex group of people. Here, there is a commonly held belief that the wind can possess a person, and can equally be exorcised from them through an intense ceremony of dance and music.

In the exhibition, Speak the wind, Iranian / Australian artist, Hoda Afshar proffers an enigmatic view of the rituals and lives that play out within the astounding landscape of these islands. As she uses photography and moving image to ensnare and parse the winds of the Strait of Hormuz, Afshar also grapples with the history of documentary photography; its beauty and its limits.

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Speakers

  • Hoda Afshar (IR/AU)

    Born 1982, Tehran, Iran
    Lives and works Melbourne, Australia

    Born in Tehran, Iran, visual artist and lecturer in photography and fine art Hoda Afshar lives and works in Melbourne. Exploring the possibilities of documentary image-making and representations of gender, marginality and displacement, Afshar pairs photography with the moving-image.

    Exhibiting and publishing her work locally and internationally, Afshar’s work is also included in many private and public collections. Her exhibitions include Remain, UQ Museum of Art in Brisbane, Beyond Place, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego CA, USA , Primavera 2018, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Waqt al tagheer: Time of Change, ACE Open, Adelaide. In 2015, she received the National Photographic Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery, and in 2018 she won the Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art, Australia.

  • Nikos Papastergiadis

    Nikos Papastergiadis is the Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures, and a Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne. Nikos is the founder – with Professor Scott McQuire – of the Spatial Aesthetics research cluster and is the Project Leader of the Australian Research Council Linkage Project, Large Screens and the Transnational Public Sphere, and Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project Public Screens and the Transformation of Public Space. His publications include Modernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012). He is also the author of numerous essays, which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the Biennales of Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul, Gwangju, Taipei, Lyon, Thessaloniki and Documenta 13.

Founding Partners
  • Bowness Family Foundation
  • Naomi Milgrom Foundation
Major Government Partners
  • City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program
  • Creative Victoria
Major Partners
  • Maddocks

PHOTO Australia respectfully acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands upon which we work and live, and the rich and diverse Indigenous cultures across what is now called Australia. For over 60,000 years, Indigenous arts and culture have thrived on this sacred land, and we honour Elders and cultural leaders past and present. This was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

01–24 March