Kubra Khademi: Art of strength and survival

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1:08It was literally a battlefield. I alone surrounded by thousands and thousands of men. Following me. They were following me. It was like a lot of moments in my own life and a lot of moments within other women in Afghanistan. You're listening to in the studio from the BBC World Service. I'm Sahar Zand, speaking to Afghan artist Kobra Khadami. I did it on my own body, like my breast, my butter, but it looks since it is metal. It looks like I've exaggerated, but it was not exaggerated when I was making it. Kobra is describing a still costume she made, a sculpted suit exaggerating her breasts and buttocks. She called the piece armor because it is armor, literally an armor that I'm wearing and walking. It represents every day of a woman in that country and society. What is that every day? It's a battle. And as if preparing for battle on a gray spring day in 2015,

2:10which just so happened to be her 26th birthday, Kobra put on the armor and stepped onto Kothasangi, a busy road in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. For me, it was like the perfect place. The audience were there. They didn't invite me. I didn't invite them. I was there. They were there. That was the truest place. Why was this the truest place? Because I was harassed the most. The culture of street harassment is by word, by gaze, touching. And every woman, every girl has the experience of being touched, grabbed there. You see that you're so crowded, occupied by men. It was a public performance confronting the daily harassment Afghan women face on the streets. It was a firm, straightforward walk as I designed it. But I was thinking there would be a call or something, but no, I was so in the center of attention of all crowd that the crowd has blocked the other cars to come. That freaked me out a little bit. And after 30 seconds or something, I started having

3:11the crowd coming to me. I was happening in the whole crowd, in the whole space, was under my control, while it was very vulnerable. Within seconds, a crowd formed around her. Curious at first, but it grew quickly. Soon, there were hundreds of men surrounding cobra, some watched, some filmed, others shouted insults and threw objects at her. What began as an artwork was becoming something far more dangerous. I think I put mirror in front of their face, how it looks like. How they look like. It's hard to look at the mirror. Eight minutes after it began, cobra reached the end of the street. She and her friend pushed through the increasingly hostile crowd and jumped into a taxi they had arranged in advance. The moment I sit in the car, boys and men, they will jump on the car and then the driver was very fast. He was driving furiously. The driver sped through the

4:15streets of Kabul. Only when they were sure they weren't being followed, the cobra and her friend get out and walk the final stretch to a friend's house. Somewhere, they knew that would be safe. We arrived. We sit and sit there. So we charged our phone and I had my Facebook on. More than thousand people who asked to follow me and hundreds of private messages, thread, kill her. We have to kill her. There were articles coming out, anti-Islam action. And that was provoking others to speak more. There was no more me after two, three days. It was others among themselves. The anger was going up and up. And suddenly I started having all these unknown numbers were calling me. That scared me. For me, it was like unveiled another level of dumbness that patriarchy brings in a society, you know. Within days, cobra's performance had moved beyond Afghanistan and made headlines around the world. Those days, my family, they were in Pakistan somewhere. My mother's

5:17Chisame in TV, in the news. My mother said, the moment I saw you, for her, it was clear that I will be killed. Cobra remained in hiding, but the anger inside the country was growing. And soon someone else would pay the price. Farjun, she was called Farjunda. Farjun was not the first and the last woman who was beaten to death in that country. A few days later, a 28-year-old woman named Farjunda, Malikzada, was brutally murdered by a mob. She had falsely been accused of burning pages of the Quran. I was so much heartbroken. I couldn't believe that a girl is just killed, burned, beaten. A lot of people say that they were looking for Cobra and they find someone else and killed. At this point, Cobra realized she could no longer stay in Afghanistan. With help from UNESCO in Paris, an urgent escape was arranged. Cobra has been based in France ever since. It's December 2025 and I've come to meet her at her

6:21home and studio in northern France. It's huge. My material like this is my decor for my theatre piece. Since leaving Afghanistan, Cobra has continued creating bold confrontational work. Her multidisciplinary art challenges patriarchal power while reclaiming their female body as a site of defiance, pleasure and survival. Her work has been exhibited widely in major galleries, museums and festivals around the world. I work with different media, video photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, performance art. I use a lot personal story in it. In collective history, female body, my own body is the center in every medium I work with. I focus on sexual desire, sexual identity as well. Why have you decided to focus so much of your work on female sexuality and women rights? You know, it's not a decision. It is within me and I cannot

7:26deny it. I have women who is Hazara, who is from Afghanistan, who is an immigrant, who is an artist, who is in exile. I have lived all forms of violence, sexual violence. So talk about those is to fight for bringing a culture of speaking up to bring reflection, you know, but to show the operation, I don't want to show the burqa, women under the burqa, you know. I don't want to paint the woman who has bruised on her body or broken leg. I don't show violence like that. I would rather show this way because this also exists. I do exist with my whole sexual desire, sexual identity. This also disturbs those violent husbands. It disturbs definitely because it comes, it comes to us. It is that simple. Women resistance can be that simple. Cobra is now preparing a new body of work for a major solo exhibition at Le Comfort Modern in Western France. The title is called Origin of the Universe. The whole series about emphasizing,

8:27focusing, showing this moment of birth or this act of giving birth and this very moment of creation, this godness reclaiming this power without any shame. She walks across the studio to a stack of paintings from the new series. You see, it's very simple image. It's just giving birth. Each painting shows a naked woman giving birth, but not to babies. Instead, the women are giving birth to animals, both real and mythical. From wild animal, it's a lion, elephant, fish. I also included a mythical animal. There is a phoenix, also a dragon. This is the power of this body. She is capable of giving life to these creatures. And the face of the woman giving birth is the same in all of them. She's very calm. Yes, it's slightly like a smile. But why do picked women giving birth to animals? In patriarchy, you know, the extreme patriarchy societies, a phoenix on N-alike,

9:27are treating women like animals. I think for me, it's even less than animal, because woman is at the service of animal as well. She gives birth, but he is the owner. Others, everything is the property. Today, Cobra is beginning a new painting for the series, a small canvas about 70 by 50 centimeters. It depicts the moment of birth, this time of a bee. Other paintings, we see the female body entirely, and the animal. But this one, I wanted to break this order, zoom, zoom in. I made focus on the body, so it's just her vagina is visible where the birth is happening, and we see her breast. She's already sketched famed pencil outlines on the white canvas at the center, and oversized bee is emerging. Before making this, I had no idea what position she would take. When I started from the eyes at the head of the bee right in the center, I continued drawing the form, and eventually around that I could imagine the form of the body. Next, Cobra begins mixing acrylic

10:34paints. I have to make the color of skin. How would you describe this color? It's ochre, and a little bit of white. I would say that it's very close to my own skin. Gold and the color of skin, almost together. For me, it reminds me of the mud houses I saw in Afghan villages, exactly, with a medium sized brush. Cobra begins laying down the first stroke of paint. These are the first layer I'm applying. It's very red and it's all one tone. One tone, yeah. I'm trying to work on the form. Is this woman giving birth to the bee and all the other women in this collection giving birth to all sorts? Are they empowered or are they suffering? No, they're just in their very natural power they have, free of judgment around their body. But I really like it because in this art critic route, women in Cobra's paintings are shameless, fearless, shameless,

11:36fearless, proud. It's interesting that you find shameless as a compliment here because, of course, in our culture, in my native Iran, in your native Afghanistan, shameless is one of the worst things you could call a woman or a girl. Yeah, I myself have heard it in my life. What reminds me to be controlled. The inspiration for this project was Cobra's maternal grandmother. An illiterate woman who was forced to marry as a child. I was so fascinated by my grandmother who herself in the villages, in our village in Afghanistan. In her entire life, she has given birth to her children while she was working in the field. The image that stuck in my mind when I was very little, I was crying like every other child and she told me, girls don't cry. Girls should be strong and prepared for any kind of situation. Girl can leave the house in the morning

12:41alone and come back to. I understood that I should not cry. This I understood, but the rest of it took me many years to understand what exactly she meant. What did she mean? When she used to go to work in the morning, dark still and comes back like when there is no light. She comes back home and start work of a woman at home, you know. But when the field she was working, it was exactly a amount of work a man is doing. But no matter if she is pregnant or if she has her period, that we never count, we never see it, what the body woman is going through. So that was her position of giving birth. So she said when the moment was coming, she was taking out her trousers, squat and weights, the baby comes out. The baby falls down, she hides the placenta inside of the earth. So the animal doesn't eat, she covers the baby, put aside, continue working, comes back two persons. She left in the morning one, she came back two. This was her. So painting these giving

13:44birth is also to remind myself whom I come. What is it for a woman to be ready for any situation? For me that defines the entire life of a woman, how much she has to sacrifice, how much she has to do, build, deconstruct, construct a new to live her life. Hearing you say this story, I'm confused about how you feel about it, because I can see both rage in your face and I can also see your smiling. I can see that you're talking about strength of your grandmother, but there is also the unfairness of the whole situation. How do you feel about this? What is this emotion that you're conveying onto these paintings? I exactly have two feelings, rage and admiration. Admiration, why I'm painting these many body of women. I think for the rest of my life, if I paint, that's not going to be enough for me. To show that what revolt means in these bodies, what

14:46lives gives these bodies, you know, what they live, it's not a theory that I'm speaking, it's life. I lived it, I still live it, and I will dedicate every single pain into my art. At the BBC, we go further, so you see clearer. With a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC app, you get unlimited articles and videos. Add free podcasts. The BBC News Channel streaming live 24 seven plus hundreds of acclaimed documentaries. From less than a dollar a week for your first year, read, watch and listen to trusted independent journalism and storytelling. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC app. Find out more at BBC.com slash unlimited. This is the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. I'm Sahar Zand, following Afghan artist Kobra Khadami, as she prepares for a major solo exhibition,

15:46shaped by her experiences of violence, misogyny and exile. Back in the studio, more than an hour after Kobra began, the whole painting, except for the body of the bee, is now covered in a single tone of oak up. It's very dry, this canvas absorbs the color. So I know some artists really like to make a statement with the marks that they make, but I can see that you actually try not to create any texture or any marks. It's unintentionally, I think these two denies, these figures, the way I staged them. It has to do with how in my childhood, I have been nourished with images from moral miniature painting, to school of Behezat, school of Herat in west of Afghanistan, in Iran, for example, school of Esfahan or Tabriz. Our books of poetry are filled with this illustration,

16:47also like calligraphy itself. I know it is very vulnerable because I always come back to my own personal story the way I was raised. That's why I think it's very uncomfortable for people from my country facing my work, in general, because I unveil very intimate part of how to be woman in my culture. If I talk about sexuality, sexual power, it's not sexualizing it through very orientalist perspective. Next comes the Behe itself. Kobra's reference is a close-up photograph she found online. The form is curved, not flying. I didn't want the position of flying, but I wanted to make an effort of coming out as well. She's bending on the belly of the woman. Halfway, she didn't arrive to her chest yet, but she's not fully out. The Behe, using a much smaller brush. Kobra is now carefully drawing an outline with a dark brown color around the edges of the wing. The wing, it is transparent, but it has a

17:53lots of reflection of the Behe herself and also surrounding. So now I mean both detail and the creation of the form. The Behe that is in that image is very, very detailed. The big close-up, you can see even their hairs growing on its body. How much detail are you going to go into with this one? I don't know, let me see. But until I'm satisfied, until it is what I have in mind. What is it that you have in mind? It has to be a bee that is breathing. It has to be alive, you know? What does that mean to you? It should be felt, you know? The bee should be felt in front of you. Okay, let me make some coffee for you. Four hours into the painting, Kobra takes a break. As she makes coffee, she tells me about growing up between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and about the childhood that shaped her. In my family, we moved few times due to Soviet war, civil war and also the first regime of Taliban.

18:54My family were forced to leave, change places and each time the whole family and we were very little, we have to start from zero. The resources was very, very, very limited and the children we are always working to help financially the family. The girls are the best, you know? They don't complain, they just work. What sort of work were you doing? Carpet, weaving, embroidery, less teaching clothes, like this, all the skills we learn if you like or if you don't, but in my case, I like because it was about making, it was about form, it was about color. It was during those years that Kobra realized she had both a passion and a talent for art and began dreaming of becoming an artist one day. And I was, I was very good at drawing and painting. My paintings were very precious. I was pasting it on the wall. So I considered myself, I was a proclaimed artist since childhood. But I understood that I need others call me artist and for that I have to go to university.

19:58So this is how the world will call me artist. Determined to pursue that dream, Kobra eventually secured a place at Beacon House National University in Lahore, Pakistan, where she began studying contemporary art in 2009. Those years, those days, for me, I start finding a platform, self-expression, little by little finding myself because coming from religious background and culture, this way of just not being able to question anything, not to be allowed to question. I learned about Puzzilini's films and that was like, oh, it broke so much of things inside of me. Like, his poems, his way of being so critical to his time. And that was very, very constructive. By the time she graduated in 2013, Kobra says, this period had transformed her, shaping the artist she would become. I was very optimistic. I was thinking that I am able to change the whole society,

21:02you know. I was thinking there is no any limit. Kobra was already pushing boundaries in Kabul. While working as a gallery curator, she staged her first solo exhibition, a performance piece called slapping, confronting domestic violence against women. I was seated in the gallery, right in the center on the chair and the public entered. So they were waiting and I start slapping myself hard, hard one, the real one. To the point that I didn't know when I will stop, stop and how she continued slapping herself until the final visitor left the gallery, about 40 minutes later. I stepped out and I saw everybody was waiting for me. And then when I start speaking with them, it was like to say that why I am slapping myself. I felt that the discussion is very constructive now, we are speaking about the definition of violence in the presence of violence, the context where we define violence, you know, how we react when a woman is being beaten up by her husband and we hear

22:05it. Because it happened to me, neighbor was beating his wife, it was Ramazan and everybody were cursing the woman and telling that again this crazy woman made her husband angry. After work, instead of being welcomed, he has to beat her wife, oh my horrible woman, you know, to that extent, when the violence is so normalized, when the violence is culture, we do not call it violence anymore. The impact of that performance, protected within the safety of the gallery, gave Kubra the confidence to take her ought onto the streets and that decision would eventually lead to Orma. Kubra returns to the canvas for the final stages of the painting. I have to be a little bit of shadow to define a space between the bee and the female body behind her and then when I step back, then we can feel this bee coming into life. How long does it normally take you to start and finish one of your paintings? This series has been each day one painting, 12 to

23:1213 hours of work. So what are you doing now? Small detail. So this slightly shadow under the breast so we can fill the first shape. You're putting some water around the outlines which helps it blend in. Exactly, yeah, to be softer. Kubra adds a faint wash off red, marking the opening from which the bee is emerging. So this is exactly where the bird is happening, a door to the world. I can't wait for the feeling it alive, you know. What do you make of the state of Afghanistan and what's happening now since the Taliban returned? Afghanistan right now is worse than any time, but it's the absolute elimination of women from every sphere you can imagine. It's like gradual debt to be more precise for women. How does that make you feel? Desperate, helpless, angry, guilt even, you know, I live in free world, but even within that degree of oppression, women continue resisting.

24:14You know, there is these underground solidarity which is super important and they are doing it, but we don't see it from outside, but that's happening and this is very precious. Nearly seven hours after she began, Kubra takes a few steps away from the canvas and studies the painting from across the room. Okay, it's done. It's done. Yeah. How do you feel about it? It's a life. I've given life to it. Yeah, it's good. I'm happy about it. The finished painting is both intimate and striking. Against the white background and naked woman leans back, calm and still. From between her legs and oversized bee, almost the size of a newborn child is emerging. It's curved body rests gently on her belly. It's striped body vividly alive against the warm tones of her skin. A surreal yet tender moment of birth, of creation and of a power

25:17that for many women like Kubra has so often been denied. The power that she has hidden, I'm showing it, but very obvious. So that should be felt. That should be remembered. There is this urge that I have to show what my grandmother told me about giving birth and how is it to be a woman, you know. I am carrying that through this series. So I think she is, well, she is within my work. If your grandmother was standing here right now looking at this, what do you think she would say? She would laugh, I think. She would get the first glimpse of humor hidden in this work. Maybe when she told me she was preparing me for birth of my body giving a birth to a real child, you know. But I didn't carry that. I am carrying it in my own way. It's now just over 10 years since Corbro fled Afghanistan. After her alma performance in Kabul,

26:23sparked a backlash that forced her into exile. I don't think the performance itself was a problem. The critique towards it was the problem or caused the problem, you know. That was not fair. To me as a person, I was terrified. The way I came, I was very vulnerable, you know. I could have been destroyed. Since then, the harassment hasn't stopped. Verbal, physical or writing, you know. Corbro continues to receive death threats and has even been attacked in public. She has to be careful about where she goes and galleries showing her work have to increase security. To be honest, I live with this fear of persecution because of my work, because of my artistic expression, because of my voice, because of my vision, but I have not stopped expressing myself. Still keeping my voice, still creating where all these sacrifices, everything you lost, worth what you've gained along the way. Yes, even if I am assassinated, have my words,

27:25art is important, art brings changes through a time, it's long, but it's very profound. If it comes from the reality, that brings change in the society. Make history change. Otherwise, who will write our history with our blood? Look at Taliban. How they have erased women from everywhere. Look at patriarchy. I think my story is a story of others. That's why my every breath has to be dedicated for making art. It's so obvious for me to continue. You've been listening to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. This program was presented and produced by me Sahar Zant.