Hoda Afshar: Performing the Invisible will open at the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in Paris, France on the 30th of September 2025.
Afshar's first solo exhibition in France, Performing the Invisible explores the power of images to shape collective narratives, particularly in contexts marked by colonialism and displacement.
Central to the exhibition is The Fold, a critical visual and psychological investigation into the enduring legacy of colonial photographic practices, and the ways in which these gazes continue to shape how bodies—particularly veiled Islamic bodies—are seen, archived, and consumed. The work draws on a series of photographs taken by psychiatrist Gaëtan de Clérambault in Morocco in the early 20th century, recontextualizing them to challenge the power dynamics and cultural biases embedded in the act of looking.
Using photography, drawings, mirrors, sound installation and video, Performing the Invisible traces the central concerns of Afshar’s practice: how images are made, who controls them, and how they shape what—and who—is seen.
More information on Hoda Afshar: Performing the Invisible is availablehere.
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Hoda Afshar’s new monograph The Fold, which accompanies the exhibition and explores the installation central to Performing the Invisible is now available to order. The book features essays by Ali Behdad and Annabelle Lacour, a conversation between Taous Dahmani and Hoda Afshar, and gathers more than 960 of Afshar’s silver gelatin reappropriations of de Clérambault’s archive - each one a gesture of reworking, refusal, and critical reflection.
To purchase your copy of The Fold, please visit the Loose Joints website here.
