Reflections of a Deleuzian People to Come: A Conversation with Hoda Afshar

This article presents a discussion with Australian Iranian artist Hoda Afshar, in which we explore some of the social and political contexts of contemporary creative practice from a Deleuzian perspective. Our discussion references work from across Afshar’s career, though we focus on a recent exhibition ( The Fold) staged as part of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Triennial in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, in late 2023 into 2024. This exhibition featured works partially derived from Afshar’s investigations in the archive of the French psychiatrist and photographer Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934), which included thousands of images of veiled Islamic women and men taken in Morocco in the 1920s. Employing diverse visual strategies and artistic techniques to restage these images, The Fold invites the viewer to question the political and aesthetic representation of marginal subjects, the colonist’s fascination with the veil, and the contemporary resonances these questions evoke. The title of Afshar’s exhibition has obvious Deleuzian echoes, though we also draw out wider references taken from Deleuze’s discussion of the ‘people to come’, including some of his own brief references to de Clérambault’s work in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. We preface this discussion by way of a brief introduction to Afshar’s practice, including relevant aspects of her training and exhibition history, while also touching upon the broader social and political interests that often feature in her work. We then explore the key resonances between these interests and our shared readings of the work of Deleuze and Guattari. We return to these themes in a brief conclusion where we offer some final thoughts on the contours of a Deleuzian creative life.