Afghanes : une vitalité désespérée

Kubra Khademi, Mortaza Behboudi and anonymous artists from Kabul

Afghan Women: A Desperate Vitality is an immersive installation created by visual artist and performer Kubra Khademi, investigative journalist Mortaza Behboudi, and a team of anonymous videographers from Kabul. Through sound, video and a collection of visual artworks, the installation allows visitors to hear, see and feel the daily resistance of women in Afghanistan in the face of systemic violence, confinement and the gradual erosion of their rights since the return of the Taliban.

The public is invited to take a seat in a room designed to resemble an Afghan living room, around a large tablecloth spread over rugs, upon which ceramics are arranged. On the walls, four windows through which images of the streets of Kabul, as they are today, come into view. In this enclosed space, the narrative unfolds through listening, sensations and images: we hear the testimonies of Laila, founder of a clandestine school for girls; Souhaila, an artist and singer; and Narges, a former teacher fighting to secure the release of her husband, who is being held by the Taliban. Deprived of education, freedom of movement and the right to speak publicly, they nevertheless continue to resist, in secret, through learning, creativity and the passing on of knowledge.

The installation tells the story of this fragile, clandestine vitality—sometimes desperate, but always alive. Despite the violence and the imposed silence, the bodies, voices and struggles of women persist in Afghanistan: they are still there.

BIOGRAPHIES

Kubra Khademi is an Afghan Hazara feminist performance and visual artist based in Paris. Her work is informed by her life as a woman and a refugee. She studied fine art at Kabul University, then at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, Pakistan. In Lahore, she began creating public performances, a practice she continued upon her return to Kabul, where her work was a response to a male-dominated society with an extreme patriarchal policy. Following the performance of her piece *Armor* in 2015, she was forced to flee her home country. She continues her performance work in Europe, supported by Latitudes Prod., and is developing her practice in drawing and painting, represented by the Eric Mouchet Gallery. In 2022, she designed the poster for the Avignon Festival and presented a solo exhibition there at the Collection Lambert, as well as at the Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern in Germany. In 2023, the premiere of her new stage production, The Golden Horizon (افق طلائی), took place at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. In 2024, she published her first graphic novel, La fille et le dragon, with Denoël, entrusting the narrative to sociologist and anthropologist Nicole Lapierre.

Mortaza Behboudi is a Franco-Afghan war correspondent and filmmaker. Renowned for his commitment to covering conflict zones, he was named in the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Media category. In 2022, he received both the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Prize for War Correspondents and the Varenne Prize for his reporting (The Sale of Children in Afghanistan and Six Months After the Return of the Taliban). On 7 January 2023, whilst on assignment in Afghanistan, he was arrested by the Taliban’s intelligence services, specifically the Haqqani network. Having extensively covered the country both before and after their takeover in 2021, his arrest highlighted the growing threats to press freedom.

After ten months in captivity, he was released on 18 October 2023. During his detention, in April 2023, he was awarded the Freedom of Expression Award by the International Press Club Association, jointly with the Polish journalist Andrzej Poczobut. In 2022, he was the only European journalist to go undercover in Iran to cover the Women, Life, Freedom movement. He published the investigative book *Women, Life, Freedom: An Undercover Reporter at the Heart of the Iranian Uprising* (Stéphane Frantz di Rippel Literary Prize 2025), and the book *Fixers: Reporters Without Bylines*.

Crédits & remerciements
Mise en scène : Kubra Khademi
Récit sonore : Mortaza Behboudi
Avec les témoignages de: Laila, Narges, Suhaila
Scénographie, installation plastique et performance : Kubra Khademi
Vidéo : vidéastes anonymes à Kaboul
Montage vidéo : Noor Azizi
Lumière : Juliette Delfosse
Mixage : Eric Boisteau
Régie générale : François Lewyllie
Directrice de production : Maria-Carmela Mini
Production Latitudes Prod (Lille)
Coproduction Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Festival d’Automne à Paris, Les Halles de Schaerbeek (Bruxelles),Théâtre Molière Scène, Nationale Archipel de Thau,Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles
Avec le soutien de la DRAC Hauts-de-France, du CNC (Centre National du Cinéma) et de Open Society Foundations via l’Afghanistan Cultural Fund
D’après une idée originale de Caroline Gillet.
Remerciements L’École d’Art du Beauvaisis, et les céramistes Amandine Brunet et Valérie Dubuisson.