Curated by Annabelle Lacour, ‘Performing the Invisible’ marks the first solo exhibition in France of Iranian-Australian artist Hoda Afshar, bringing together two major works that interrogate visibility, power, and the colonial gaze.
Hoda Afshar, Speak the Wind, 2015 – 2020. Inkjet photographic prints. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Milani, Brisbane, Australia
Now on view at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, ‘Hoda Afshar: Performing the Invisible’ presents two seminal projects by the Iranian-born, Melbourne-based artist: Speak the Wind (2015–2020) and The Fold (2023–2025). Curated by Annabelle Lacour, the exhibition examines how photography shapes and distorts our perception, addressing the tension between visibility and erasure.
In Speak the Wind, Afshar turns to the islands of the Strait of Hormuz to reflect on local beliefs that the wind can possess the body, tracing unseen forces of memory and history. The Fold engages the museum’s archives, reworking Gaëtan de Clérambault’s colonial photographs of Morocco to expose the politics embedded in acts of looking. Together, the works transform image-making into a form of witnessing and resistance.
View of the exhibition ‘Hoda Afshar. Performing the Invisible’ on display at the museum from September 30, 2025, to January 25, 2026. Through her poetic and socially engaged work, Hoda Afshar questions the history of the gaze and pushes the boundaries of photography, transforming it into a powerful tool of revelation and resistance. Photo: Léo Delafontaine. © musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, photo Léo Delafontaine
ART AFRICA: In ‘Speak the Wind’, you evoke invisible forces through poetic image-making and community collaboration. Could you share how your process of working with the residents in the Strait of Hormuz shaped your understanding of these winds? What responsibilities did you feel in portraying such unseen, culturally charged phenomena, and how did your empathy and respect for the local community influence this process?
Hoda Afshar: The more I engaged with members of the community, the more I came to understand how diverse and often divergent their own perspectives are on the history and phenomena that the work explores. The question became how to do justice to these multiple dimensions and attitudes. This is ultimately what determined the approach and shape of the work—the way it combines documentary and staged or poetic elements, for example, or its non-linear structure. Working with empathy and respect meant avoiding, as much as possible, the imposition of a particular perspective—my own or any other. Of course, this is difficult when, at the end of the day, you have to make decisions about where to place a camera and how to sequence images and so on, but that is precisely why my approach generally involves either collaboration or strategies that deliberately point to the partiality or fragmentariness of what I am presenting as the image maker.
Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault, Untitled [veiled woman], 1918-1919. Print on baryta paper, 27.9 x 38.3cm. © musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
In The Fold, you courageously confront the colonial gaze embedded in Gaëtan de Clérambault’s photographs. How did your engagement with the musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac’s archive influence the visual and ethical strategies you adopted to “unfold” or resist the original images?
I generally adopted visual strategies that emphasise the idea that the archives tell us less about the photographed subjects presented in these images, than about the photographer himself, de Clérambault, about his own perspective and the cultural milieu within which this perspective took shape. For example, by reproducing the images as zoomed-in, pixilated squares, I highlight the artificiality and violence behind this look or perspective. I am trying to remove information to emphasise that there is no deeper understanding to be gained here, to weaken our sense of the reliability of this or similar archives. This decision arose by chance: this is how the images appeared when one attempted to download copies from the museum’s digital archive—presumably to prevent their use and distribution. Reproducing the images in this way also serves as a reference to the ways institutions continue to manage what and how we see through mechanisms of control. But I have also not tried to correct this situation by providing any ‘missing’ knowledge, either. This is important. I wanted to frustrate the audience, to disrupt their desire for knowledge and deny them this virtual satisfaction, precisely as a way of making them confront their own gaze or desire—including the desire for knowledge. Hence, the recurring presence of mirrors is also found in the various components of the work. The entire job revolves around turning things around and focusing on the viewer, as well as the act of looking itself. 
View of the exhibition ‘Hoda Afshar. Performing the Invisible’ on display at the museum from September 30, 2025, to January 25, 2026. Through her poetic and socially engaged work, Hoda Afshar questions the history of the gaze and pushes the boundaries of photography, transforming it into a powerful tool of revelation and resistance. Photo: Léo Delafontaine. © musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, photo Léo Delafontaine
Both works address the violence of invisibility, whether through silence, superstition, or colonial representation. This concept refers to the harm caused by the absence or suppression of certain narratives or histories. How do you see photography functioning not just as a tool of documentation, but as a site of tension between presence, power, and erasure?
This is fundamental. Visibility is at the heart of all social and political life. It determines who is counted—i.e., who is included and who is excluded—whose voices are heard, and so on. However, I suppose my main idea is that it is not simply who or what we see (or do not see) that matters, but how we perceive or how things appear to us, both in terms of patterns of representation and the structures and forces that determine them. There is violence in visibility itself, and being seen in specific ways is or can be effectively the same as erasure. Most of my work explores different strategies for challenging these structures through image-making, as this is where they are often reflected most explicitly and thus reproduced. This explains why there is usually a reflexive element in my work–the way I explore subjects while also responding to the ways these subjects have historically been represented (including within the domain of photography). It is challenging because the very strategies used to address these problems often fail, as they end up reinforcing the same structures they aim to oppose by attempting to appeal to the audience in some way, e.g., by erasing differences. At the same time, those structures are also moving targets, so you have to try different strategies and accept that there will always be limitations to and disagreements about what your work is aiming to achieve. As I mentioned earlier, regarding The Fold, my goal is often simply to encourage audiences to confront their own blind spots, as well as the blind spots of history and how history has been recorded, including within the domain of photography. 
Hoda Afshar, Speak the Wind, 2015 – 2020. Inkjet photographic prints. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Milani, Brisbane, Australia
This exhibition marks your first solo show in France within a museum deeply entangled in colonial collecting practices. How do you navigate presenting critical work, such as The Fold, within institutional spaces, like the musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, that are themselves under scrutiny for their historical practices?
It is precisely because of this entanglement that this work belongs here, particularly at the Musée du Quai Branly, where the problematic historical practices and reasons for scrutiny are so obvious. The two works I am showing here respond to these historical practices in different ways. I am trying to generate knowledge and engage broader audiences about these issues, so presenting the work in a context where it is on full display actually helps. At the same time, working in spaces that are, or pretend to be, removed from these contexts can present problems that are even more challenging and difficult to navigate. Consider how critical work is often embraced by cultural institutions as a token or shield against criticism, for example, a strategy to avoid commitment or action in other areas. At the end of the day, the fact that institutions are now compelled to engage with these issues due to the success of the critical work done over the last few decades is something we should embrace and attempt to navigate. 
View of the exhibition ‘Hoda Afshar. Performing the Invisible’ on display at the museum from September 30, 2025, to January 25, 2026. Through her poetic and socially engaged work, Hoda Afshar questions the history of the gaze and pushes the boundaries of photography, transforming it into a powerful tool of revelation and resistance. Photo: Léo Delafontaine. © musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, photo Léo Delafontaine
You often blur the lines between documentary and conceptual photography. What draws you to this hybrid approach, and how do you envision it evolving as you continue to explore themes of marginality, history, and resistance? What new directions do you see your work taking in the future?
My approach is simply an extension of my relationship with the subjects I am exploring. I only make work about subjects that I am personally engaged with in some way, and when I am motivated by a sense that something needs to change. Suppose there is one thread running through all my work. In that case, it is probably this idea that injustice and other forms of violence exist because specific ways of seeing and relating have become accepted or normalised, and so to change things, we need to change the way that we see and tell. I could never make a documentary work that pretends to be removed from its subject. At the same time, the very approach of using photography as a tool to analyse and respond to ways of seeing involves thinking conceptually about these issues. As for the future, I see myself continuing in the same direction; however, as always, the question is what path to take, given that political and visible structures are constantly evolving—often in response to the strategies we use to resist them. This is especially challenging today, as images dominate our lives and are being produced at an increasingly rapid pace. But resistance always involves working against images.
‘Hoda Afshar: Performing the Invisible’ is on view at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac from 30 September 2025 to 25 January 2026. For visitor information, visit www.quaibranly.fr/en.
