Deviant Vision #4

2020 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
35 x 30 cm

Kubra Khademi’s work celebrates the female body and in her detailed drawings and paintings she portrays female bodies floating on white paper. Specifically she portrays the two bodies she had access to when she learned how to draw: herself and on occasion her mother. She represents women as warriors, goddesses and shameless playful heroines in search of pleasure and discovery. She often uses personal stories as raw material for her drawings that are characterized by sharp continuous lines and flat colors, with loose references to Mongolian miniatures, Buddhist paintings with an influence of modern illustrated anatomy books. In her pictorial work bodies are absolved of suffering, they are sparse in emotional expression, even scenes of violence are devoid of drama, with a strange sense of serenity, peace and stoicism. The series of drawings Deviant-Vision confronts the notion that nudity and desire are sins, and the idea that the female body is to be hidden away in order to not disturb the order of the masculine world. Through the simple drawing of non-sexual body parts that are usually covered, evoking lightly sexual allusive gestures, she mocks the exaggerated reactions and sexist projections on women’s body parts that are kept hidden. Next to the drawings, written with gold leaf we find verses from Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) a celebrated Persian poet, jurist, theologian, mystic and Afghani exile.

Afghani artist Kubra Khademi uses her practice to explore her experiences as both a refugee and as a woman. Khademi spent her childhood and teenage years in Ghor, a province that has repeatedly suffered from targeted killings and bombings by the Taliban in the last twenty years. During her studies she began exploring public performance, a practice she continued upon her return to Kabul. Her work actively responded to the extreme patriarchal politics of the region, and in February 2015 she made the performance Armor turning her underwear into a protective shell to address the constant repression and harassment that women suffer. She fashioned a kind of armour that moulded her breasts and buttocks. She performed wearing it on a crowded street. The performance lasted only eight minutes, the reaction was so violent that she was forced to interrupt it. A number of death threats followed, forcing her to flee to France a few days after the performance. In both her performances and her gouaches, Kubra Khademi utilizes her body to affirm a shame-free femininity and to seek a new place for women in society, history and in public space.

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