Photomedia artist Hoda Afshar was thrilled when the gallery suggested an exhibition of her work from the past 10 years, but responded: "Oh - I'm not dead yet!"
Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line will be by far the biggest exhibition for the Iranian-born, Melbourne-based artist, with the show to open in Sydney on Saturday.
"Knowing the work that I've done is being recognised on this level and will engage a much broader public is quite an incredible moment in my life," she told AAP.
Perhaps the best-known picture will be a black and white photograph titled Behrouz Boochani - Manus Island 2018, showing the author during his six years in immigration limbo.
Afshar's prize-winning images wrestle with state violence and marginalisation, and interrogate the power dynamics of documentary photography.
They are as much activism as art.
Art Gallery of NSW director Michael Brand says Afshar is one of the most exciting artists working in Australia.
"Her work gives visibility to marginalised voices and serves as a powerful reminder of art's capacity to embolden, inspire, and move," he said.
Afshar's work has taken her from photographing underground parties in her native Iran, to filming with whistleblowers in Australia and interviewing asylum seekers on Manus Island.
A new body of work commissioned for the show responds to the recent women-led uprisings in Iran, with images made in Australia.
A series of large-scale photographs shows Iranian women who, like the artist herself, watched the uprisings from the other side of the world with feelings of hope and resilience.
"But at the same time the grief over the killing and arrests, the excessive violence of the government, the juxtaposition of those feelings was quite jarring to me," said Afshar.
She has taken the visual elements of the protests in Iran as a theme, including the release of white doves at funerals, and women on the streets plaiting each others' hair, showing them refusing to wear the mandatory hijab in public.
These images were made as acts of resistance and shared on social media.
Afshar has re-staged these images in Australia, looking at how the reality of the protests becomes at times a performance, that shows a deep knowledge of the power of pictures.
"These women are staging their rebelliousness for the world's eyes to see," she said.
Afshar moved to Australia in 2007 just as she was beginning to earn some recognition for her photography in Iran.
She had to start from scratch, but hoped to live in a more democratic and equal society.
Instead, she found some were more equal than others and experienced shocking racism as a migrant from the Middle East.
It led her to focus her lens on those marginalised in Australia, including whistleblowers who can face a lifetime of consequences for speaking the truth.
Exhibition curator Isobel Parker Philip said Afshar's work was radical, but anchored in compassion.
"Hoda's photographs and videos are emotionally embroiled in the world they depict," she said.
A Curve is a Broken Line is at the Art Gallery of NSW from Saturday until January 21.
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