Speak the Wind
2022 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
17:50 minutes
Hoda Afshar
In the islands of the Strait of Hormuz off the southern coast of Iran, a distinctive local culture has emerged as the result of many centuries of cultural and economic exchange, the traces of which are seen not only in the material culture of these islands but also in the customs and beliefs of their inhabitants. Central to these is a belief in the existence of winds—generally thought of as harmful—that may possess a person, causing her to experience illness or disease, and a corresponding ritual practice involving incense, music and movement in which an hereditary cult leader speaks with the wind through the afflicted patient in one of many local or foreign tongues in order to negotiate its exit. While their exact origins are unclear, the existence of similar beliefs and practices in many African countries suggests that the cult may have been brought to the south of Iran from southeast Africa through the Arab slave trade. In Speak the Wind , Hoda Afshar illuminates the Strait of Hormuz as a contact zone where the collision of cultures has given rise to hybrid traditions. She offers an enigmatic view of the rituals and lives that play out within the astounding landscape of these islands, using photography and moving image to grapple with the history of documentary photography; its beauty and its limits.
At the intersection of conceptual, staged and documentary image-making, Hoda Afshar’s artistic practice explores the representation of gender, marginality and displacement. Initially drawn to the potential of the documentary image to unearth hidden realities, she is equally committed to critiquing the collusion between the photographic medium and hierarchies of power. Informed by her own experience with migration and cultural displacement, Afshar’s work takes the intrusiveness of the camera as a point of departure to unpack the relationship among truth, power and the image while disrupting traditional image-making conventions. Her 2018 video installation, Remain, is exemplary of Afshar’s practice in the way it blends her strong political views with a poetic vision. In it, she addresses Australia’s contentious border protection policy and the human rights of asylum seekers. Afshar travelled to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and followed a group of stateless men who remained on the island following the closure of the infamous immigration detention centre on the island in October 2017.
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