Kubra Khademi: Art of strength and survival

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1:07It 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 Khademi. I did it on my own body, like my breast, my buttock. 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 steel costume she made, a sculpted suit exaggerating her breasts and buttocks.

1:50She called the piece armor. Because it is armor. literally an armour 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 grey spring day in 2015, which just so happened to be her 26th birthday, Kobra put on the armour and stepped onto Kota Sanghi, 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?

2:30Because 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, it's 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 car 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 that, after 30 seconds or something, I started having the crowd coming to me.

3:11I was happening, and the whole crowd and 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 a 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 a friend pushed through the increasingly hostile crowd and jumped into a taxi they had arranged in advance.

4:02The moment I sit in the car, boys and men, they would jump on the car. But the driver was very fast. He was driving furiously. The situation was very scary, you know. The driver sped through the streets of Kabul. Only when they were sure they weren't being followed did Cobra and her friend get out and walk the final stretch to a friend's house. Somewhere they knew they'd be safe. We arrived, we sit and sit. So we charged our phone and I had my Facebook on. More than a thousand people who asked to follow me and hundreds of private messages. Threat. Kill her. We have to kill her. There was articles coming out, anti-Islam action.

4:44And that was provoking others to speak more. So there was no more me after two, three days. It was others among themselves. The anger was going up and up. And I, like, suddenly I start 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, Kobra's performance had moved beyond Afghanistan and made headlines around the world. Those days, my family, they were in Pakistan somewhere. My mother, she saw me in TV, in the news. My mother said, the moment I saw you, for her, it was clear that I will be killed.

5:23Kobra remained in hiding, but the anger inside the country was growing. And soon, someone else would pay the price. Farhonde, she was called Farhonde. Farhonde 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 Farhonde Malikzada was brutally murdered by a mob. She had falsely been accused of burning pages of the Koran. 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 realised she could no longer stay in Afghanistan.

6:05With help from UNESCO in Paris, an urgent escape was arranged.

6:13Cobra has been based in France ever since. It's December 2025 and I've come to meet her at her home and studio in northern France. Good morning. My books and my stuff, so it's not, I'm new in this house. 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 the 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.

7:00I use a lot of personal story in it. and 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 deny it. I have a woman 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 oppression.

7:44I don't want to show the burqa, woman 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 shoot 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 when it comes to us, it is that simple. Woman resistance can be that simple. Cobre is now preparing a new body of work for a major solo exhibition at Le Confort Moderne in Western France. The title, it's called Origin of the Universe. The whole series is about emphasising, focusing, 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.

8:39She walks across the studio to a stack of paintings from the new series. You see, it's a 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 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. Yeah, it's slightly like a smile. But why depict women giving birth to animals?

9:21In patriarchy, you know, in the extreme patriarchy societies, Afghanistan and alike are 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, Kobra is beginning a new painting for the series. A small canvas about 70 by 50 centimetres. 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. And I made focus on the body. So it's just her vagina is visible where the birth is happening.

10:06And we see her breast. She's already sketched feigned pencil outlines on the white canvas. At the centre, an oversized bee is emerging. Before making this, I had no idea what position she would take. 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 paints. 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 colour of skin almost together.

10:46For 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 bright. Brut. And it's all one tone. One tone, yeah. 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 are just in their very natural power they have free of judgment around their body but I really liked it because when this art critique wrote women in Kubra's paintings are shameless fearless shameless fearless 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.

11:52Yeah, I myself have heard it in my life. What reminds me to be controlled. The inspiration for this project was Kobra'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 and 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 alone and come back too.

12:42I 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 in the field she was working, it was exactly the amount of work a man is doing. But no matter if she's pregnant or if she has her period, that we never count. We never see it, what the body of 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.

13:24The 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 this, giving birth, 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 anew 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 you're smiling.

14:13I can see that you're talking about strength of your grandmother, but there's also the unfairness of the whole situation. How do you feel about this? Like, 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 bodies 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 life 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.

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16:30Kubra Khademi:Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. Ever Google a money question and end up 12 tabs deep with 12 different answers? This podcast is your shortcut back to clarity. NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast breaks down financial decisions with a team of trusted journalists. They explain the why behind decisions like investing, home buying, and choosing credit cards with clear research-backed insights. No jargon, no misinformation. Make your next financial move with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast on your favourite podcast app. This is the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.

17:13I'm Sahar Zand. following Afghan artist Kobra Khademi as she prepares for a major solo exhibition shaped 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 ochre. It's very dry, this canvas absorbs the colour. 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 this 2D-ness, these figures, the way I stage them, it has to do with how in my childhood I have been nourished with images.

18:04from Mughal miniature painting to School of Behzat, School of Herat in the west of Afghanistan, in Iran, for example, School of Isfahan or Tabriz. Other books of poetry are filled with these illustrations. Also, 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 a very intimate part of how to be a woman in my culture. If I talk about sexuality, sexual power, it's not sexualising it through a very Orientalist perspective.

18:52Next comes the bee 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, like making an effort of coming out as well. She's like bending on the belly of the woman. Yeah. Halfway. She didn't arrive to her chest yet, but she's not fully out, the bee. Using a much smaller brush, Cobra is now carefully drawing an outline with a darker brown colour around the edges of the wing. The wing, it is transparent, but it has a lot of reflection of the bee herself. and also her surrounding. So now I'm in both detail and the creation of the form.

19:36The bee that is in that image is very, very detailed. Be close up, you can see even the 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's 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. But what does that mean to you? It should be felt, you know, the bee should be felt in front of you. OK, 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.

20:20In my family, we moved a few times due to Soviet war, civil war, and also the first regime of Taliban. My family were forced to leave, change places. And each time, the whole family, and we were very little, we have to start from zero. Our resources was very, very, very limited. And we children, we are always working to help financially the family. And the girls are the best, you know. They don't complain, they just work. What sort of work are you doing? Carpet, weaving, embroidery, stitching clothes. These are all skills we learn. If you like it, you don't. But in my case, I liked it because it was about making.

21:01It was about form. It was about colour. It was during those years that Kobra realised she had both a passion and a talent for art and began dreaming of becoming an artist one day. And 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. So 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.

21:46Those years, those days, for me I started finding a platform, for 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 Pasolini'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, Cobra 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, you know.

22:37I was thinking there is no any limit. Cobra 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 centre on a chair, and the public entered, so they were waiting, and I started slapping myself hard, hard one, the real one, to the point that I didn't know when I would stop and how I would stop. 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.

23:16And then when I started speaking with them, it was like to say that why I'm slapping myself. I felt that the discussion is very constructive now. We are speaking about the definition of violence and 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 it. 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.

23:58You know, to that extent, when the violence is so normalized, when the violence is cultured, we do not call it violence anymore. The impact of that performance, protected within the safety of the gallery, gave Cobra the confidence to take her art onto the streets, and that decision would eventually lead to armor. Cobra returns to the canvas for the final stages of the painting. I have 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?

24:42This series has been each day one painting, 12 to 13 hours of work. So what are you doing now? Small detail. So there's slightly shadow under the breast so we can feel the first shape. You're putting some water around the outlines which helps it blend in. Exactly, yeah, to be softer. Cobra adds a faint wash of red, marking the opening from which the bee is emerging. So this is exactly where the birth 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.

25:28It'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 you know there is this 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.

26:02Nearly seven hours after she began, Cobra 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, a naked woman leans back, calm and still. From between her legs, an oversized bee, almost the size of a newborn child, is emerging. Its curved body rests gently on her belly, its striped body vividly alive against the warm tones of her skin. A surreal yet tender moment of birth, of creation, and of a power that, for many women like Cobra, has so often been denied.

26:56The 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 humour hidden in this work. Maybe when she told me she was preparing me for birth, of my body giving birth to a real child, you know, but I didn't carry that.

27:45I am carrying it in my own way.

27:51It's now just over 10 years since Kobra fled Afghanistan. after her armor performance in Kabul sparked 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. Korbrok 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.