The Documentary Podcast · BBC World Service

Kubra Khademi: Art of strength and survival

·26 min·2 clips

Kubra Khademi's armor performance in Kabul drew hundreds of men who shouted insults and threw objects at her.

Kubra Khademi is a Hazara Afghan artist who has lived in exile in France since 2015 after her performance piece Armor placed her in immediate physical danger in Kabul. The performance involved walking along Kota Sangi, a road where she had personally experienced the worst harassment, wearing a metal suit that amplified the sexualized body parts that men in public grabbed and targeted. Within seconds hundreds of men surrounded her, some filming, others throwing objects. After eight minutes she reached the end of the street, jumped into a pre-arranged taxi, and was chased by men who jumped on the car before the driver accelerated away. On Facebook that night she received a thousand follow requests and hundreds of death threats, and news articles appeared calling the performance an anti-Islamic action. Days later, Farhunda Malikzada was beaten to death by a mob for allegedly burning pages of the Quran, and many believed she was targeted in part because people were looking for Khademi. With help from UNESCO Paris, Khademi evacuated and has remained based in France. The BBC documentary visits her at her studio in December 2025, where she is preparing work for a major solo show at Le Confort Moderne. The new series, Origin of the Universe, depicts naked women in calm, unhurried poses giving birth to animals including lions, elephants, fish, phoenixes, and dragons, with the same calm, slightly smiling face on every woman. Khademi explains the series as a response to patriarchal societies that treat women as less than animals, positioning female bodies as sources of creation and power rather than objects of shame. The inspiration came from her maternal grandmother, an illiterate woman forced into child marriage, in whose lifetime she gave birth many times. Khademi addresses the use of the word shameless as a weapon against women who claim bodily autonomy, noting that the same insult intended to control now reads as a descriptor of her artistic practice. The episode interweaves Khademi's narration of her own childhood in Afghanistan with observation of her painting live in the studio.

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