Hoda Afshar

Remain, 2018
Film, two-channel digital video, duration: 23 min 29 secs

Remain was made in collaboration with several of the men who still remain on Manus Island, PNG, six or more years after they left their homelands to seek asylum in Australia, but instead were sent to languish in the remote offshore detention centre. Comprising still and moving images, voice recordings and text, the work involves these men retelling their individual and shared stories through staged images, words, and poetry, and bearing witness to life in the Manus camps: from the death of friends and dreams of freedom, to the strange air of beauty, boredom, and violence that surrounds them on the island.