Portrait of Behrouz Boochani, 2018, Hoda Afshar
Inkjet print, 20cm x 16cm
Provenance: Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne.
Hoda Afshar was born in Tehran, Iran, and is now based in Melbourne, Australia. Through her art practice, Hoda explores the possibilities of documentary image-making. Working in both photography and moving-image, she explores the representation of gender, marginality and displacement. Her processes disrupt traditional image-making practices, play with the presentation of imagery, or merge aspects of conceptual, staged and documentary photography. Hoda has been shortlisted for many prestigious art awards, and in 2015 she won Australia’s National Photographic Portrait Prize and in 2018, won Bowness Photography Prize (1).
The Portrait of Bwhrouz Boochani, was part of the award-winning portraiture series titled, Remain. Remain was made in collaboration with detained asylum seekers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Over five years has passed since the the subjects left their homes to seek asylum in Australia, and the series records testimony of their lives in incarcerated on Manus (2).