Kubra Khademi
One’s own room Inside Kabul

Caroline Gillet, Kubra Khademi et Sumaia Sediqi

Inside Kabul first emerged as a podcast, created by journalist Caroline Gillet, who collected voice messages from two young Afghan women for several years after the Taliban takeover. The project was later adapted into an animated film with illustrations by Kubra Khademi. In 2025, it takes the form of an immersive and sensory experience: One’s Own Room Inside Kabul.
One’s Own Room Inside Kabul is a collaborative work by Caroline Gillet and Kubra Khademi, accompanied by a video creation made by an anonymous team in Kabul. The installation offers a sensory immersion into an Afghan living room, where the audience follows the thoughts of Raha (Sumaia Sediqi), isolated from the world after the Taliban’s return to power. This immersive experience highlights the complexity of emotions felt by this young woman during her confinement, through a series of voice messages and spatialized sound design.
As her testimony unfolds, the setting evolves: a video installation and lighting effects interact with a scenography that gradually reveals its ambiguities, allowing the audience to feel the progressive restriction of freedoms.
The scenography pays tribute to the 10th century Persian poet Rabia Balkhi, from northern Afghanistan, who was imprisoned and killed for freely expressing her love and poetry.
In echoing the violence of the confinement imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban, One’s Own Room Inside Kabul questions human resilience in the face of oppression and challenges each of us to reflect on the fragility of freedoms worldwide.
An immersive project that transforms personal testimony into a powerful call for collective reflection.

Biographies

Brussels-born Caroline Gillet has been producing documentary series for France Inter for fifteen years. Winner of the Prix Italia for Inside Kaboul, a podcast based on testimonies by Afghan citizens, she also adapted the project into an animated series for France Télévisions and the BBC. She documented stories from the Ukraine in Notes vocales d’Ukraine and explored Europe’s subversive youth in Foule Continentale. Co-creator of the live documentary series Radio Live, she has written for Actes Sud, directed a film for France 3, and teaches at the Université de Louvain.

Hazara performance artist and feminist activist Kubra Khademi was born in Afghanistan in 1989. In her resolutely political work, she explores her life as a refugee woman. As a fine arts student in Kabul and Lahore, she created her first public performances as a way to challenge patriarchy. In 2015, following her performance of Armor, she was forced to flee Afghanistan. She became a French citizen in 2020 and has since been honoured as Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Since then, she has exhibited her work in international institutions, and she frequently collaborates with the Galerie Eric Mouchet. In 2023, she created The Golden Horizon at the Théâtre de la Ville.

Sumaia Sediqi is a refugee entrepreneur and Afghan campaigner for women’s rights and education. She was born in September 2001 in Kabul. She was studying business management, but was unable to complete her course after the Taliban banned women from continuing their education. In August 2021, she took the pseudonym Raha and with her friend Behishta Rahmaty (Marwa) began sending hundreds of voice notes to journalist Caroline Gillet to document life under the Taliban and denounce their abuses. These messages became a podcast in two seasons, ‘Inside Kabul’ and ‘Outside Kabul’ for France Inter. The podcast was then adapted into an animated film for the BBC and France TV. In 2025, the project became an immersive installation. Sumaia Sediqi fled the country in January 2023 and now lives in Strasbourg, where her family joined her in July 2024. She was part of the 5th promotion of the SINGA programme, which supports entrepreneurs. She is the co-founder of DOR Afghanistan, a fashion brand dedicated to preserving Afghanistan’s rich heritage and empowering Afghan women. Through DOR Afghanistan, she offers Afghan women the opportunity to work and earn an income, even under restrictive conditions. She is also a student on the Launchpad programme at HEC Paris, where she developed her entrepreneurial skills and her vision of impact businesses.