Kubra Khademi, Mortaza Behboudi et artistes anonymes de Kaboul
- Live performance
- La rose des ventes Scène nationale Lille Métropole, Villeneuve d'Ascq
- 1h
- Latitudes Prod'
Afghanes : une vitalité désespérée
An Afghan salon, four windows on Kabul, three powerful, intimate portraits: Afghanes: une vitalité désespérée allows us to hear, see and feel the daily resistance of the women of Afghanistan.
Kubra Khademi is a performance artist and a plastician, and Mortaza Behboudi is a war correspondent and director. Along with a team of anonymous video reporters from Kabul, they invite us to witness the daily fights led by the women of Afghanistan against the systemic violence, the diminution and progressive disappearance of their rights since the return of the Taliban. In a closed setting like an Afghan salon, the stories unfold through listening, sensations and images: for example the testimony of Laila, the founder of a clandestine school for girls, of Souhaila, an artist and singer, and of Narges, a former teacher who is fighting to free her husband, a prisoner of the Taliban. Deprived of education, of freedom of movement and forbidden to speak out in public, they continue to resist in secret, teaching, creating, transmitting. The installation shares their fragile, secret, sometimes desperate vitality but always so alive.
Accessibility disclaimer :
→ spoken text in dari with french subtitles
Biography(s)
Kubra Khademi is a Hazara artist, performer and feminist born in 1989 in Afghanistan. Through her practice, Kubra Khademi explores her life as a refugee and a woman. She studied fine arts at Kabul University before attending Beaconhouse 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 extreme patriarchal politics. After the execution of her performance known as Armor in 2015, she was forced to flee her home country. She was a refugee in France until she obtained French citizenship in 2020. Today, she lives and works in Paris. In 2016, she received an MFA Fellowship at the Pantheon and Audrey Azoulay, Minister of Culture, elevated her to the rank of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Nominated for the Emerige Revelations in 2019 and a 2020 winner of the 1% art market, Kubra Khademi was in residence at the Fiminco Foundation, Paris, until 2021. In 2022, she was in long-term residency in New York with the Salomon Foundation, and designed the poster for the Avignon Festival during which she presented a solo exhibition at the Collection Lambert. At the same time, she presented a major solo exhibition at the Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern in Germany. In 2023, her new performance The Golden Horizon (افق طلائی) premiered at the Théâtre de la Ville, Paris. Since 2016, Latitudes Prod. accompanies the development of her artistic and performative projects, and since 2020, her plastic work is represented by Galerie Eric Mouchet, in Paris. Her work has been presented in numerous venues, including Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), TNG (Lyon), Museum Ludwig, Festival d’Avignon, Kunsthalle Thun, Void Contemporary Art Centre (Derry Londonderry), Pablo’s birthday (New York), the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Bangkok Biennale, the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), El Rastro (Madrid), Signal (Brussels), the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), the MuCEM (Marseille), the Fondation Fiminco (Romainville)… In 2024, she publishes with anthropologist Nicole Lapierre her first graphic novel, La fille et le dragon, at Éditions Denoël.
Mortaza Behboudi is a French-Afghan war journalist and director. Known for his dedication to covering war zones, he was nominated for the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the media category. In 2022, he received both the Prix Bayeux-Calvados-Normandie for war correspondents and the Prix Varenne for his work as a reporter (The Sale of Afghan Children and Six Months After the Taliban’s Return). On January 7, 2023, while on assignment in Afghanistan, he was arrested by the Taliban intelligence services, notably the Haqqani network. Having extensively covered the country before and after their takeover, his arrest highlighted the increasing threat to press freedom. After ten months in captivity, he was released on October 18, 2023. While detained, in April 2023, he was awarded the Freedom of Speech Prize by the Association internationale des clubs de la presse, which he shared with Polish journalist Andrzej Poczobut.In 2022, he was the only European journalist to infiltrate Iran to cover the “Woman, Life, Liberty” movement. He later published his report Femme, vie, liberté : Un reporter infiltré au cœur de la révolte iranienne (Prix littéraire Stéphane Frantz di Rippel 2025), as well as the book Fixers: Reporters Without Bylines.
Credits
Direction: Kubra Khademi
Sound narrative: Mortaza Behboudi
With the testomonies of: Laila, Narges, Suhaila
Scenography, plastic installation and performance: Kubra Khademi
Video: Anonymous videographers in Kabul
Video editing: Noor Azizi
Lighting: Juliette Delfosse
Sound mixing: Eric Boisteau
Technical management: François Lewyllie
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
With the support of the DRAC Hauts-de-France, the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma) and Open Society Foundations via the Afghanistan Cultural Fund
Based on an original idea by Caroline Gillet.
Thanks to L’École d’Art du Beauvaisis, and ceramists Amandine Brunet and Valérie Dubuisson
