Born in Tehran, Iran, Hoda Afshar is now based in Melbourne where she practices as a Visual artist. She completed a Bachelor degree in Fine Art – Photography in Tehran and began her career as a documentary photographer in 2005. She is currently a PhD candidate in the department of Art at Curtin University, and a lecturer at Photography Studies College in Melbourne. In 2006, World Press Photo selected Hoda (as one of the top ten young documentary photographers in Iran) to attend their Educational training program. She has been exhibiting locally since 2007 and also internationally in major photography festivals such as Pingyao international festival of photography in China (2012) and PhotoVisa festival of photography in Russia (2013). Hoda has also been shortlisted for prestigious photography awards such as the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Prize and the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prizes. In 2015, she was selected as the winner of National Photographic Portrait Prize.
Through her practice, Hoda reflects on issues related to power relations, displacement and post-identity politics. Her artwork attempts to open lines of communication in a world both homogenized by global economy and unsettled by mass migration. She tests diaspora, exoticism and cosmopolitanism for artistic and uncanny image-making possibilities.
