“Women, life, freedom.” This was the slogan adopted by thousands of Iranians who took to the streets in September 2022 after Jina Mahsa Amini, aged 22, died in police custody following her arrest for improperly wearing her hijab.

Amini’s death, and the widespread outrage that followed, became a source of inspiration for Hoda Afshar. In the Tehran-born artist’s photographic series In Turn (2023), which debuted in 2023 in a major midcareer survey at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Afshar transforms the act that led to Amini’s murder into a form of collective mourning. The subjects are Iranian women based in Australia, clad in simple black linen, without headscarves. Backs turned, faces obscured, the women somberly braid one another’s hair against a hazy, steel-blue sky; in some photographs, Afshar overlays images of white doves.