ARCO Madrid 2026

Kubra Khademi is a 35-year-old Hazara artist from Afghanistan. She has been living in France since 2016. She faced death threats for her artistic commitment and was forced to flee her country at the age of 26. Born into a Hazara family, she experienced a childhood marked by exile and humiliation. Yet the intimate experience of the hammam with her mother, aunts, and sisters, before she was ten, awakened her desire to draw and opened a horizon of freedom. The hammam, the only protected space in Afghanistan where women have complete freedom of expression, allows them to observe women’s naked bodies and openly mock men’s stupidity.
 
Upon her arrival in France, Kubra Khademi strengthened her dual artistic practice as a performer and painter, perfectly mastering the technique of gouache, which she learned during her first year of art studies in Kabul. Her performances, which range from the serious when they evoke the fate of women under patriarchal influence, to the burlesque when they describe the failings of men, have been presented in many countries. Her gouache work is closely linked to her performance work, sometimes anticipating it or even being an integral part of the performance.
 
This series, entitled “Bread, Work, Freedom,” is a tribute to Afghan women fighting against patriarchy in general and the Taliban dictatorship in particular. When the United States abandoned Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, Kubra Khademi wrote a letter to numerous influential female politicians around the world, alerting them to the uncertain future of Afghan women and asking them to intervene. From Angela Merkel to Kamala Harris, from Hillary Clinton to Ursula von der Leyen, from Sanna Marin, the Finnish Prime Minister, to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia and Nobel Peace Prize 2011, none of them responded to her call for help. Thus, the idea for a forthcoming performance was born in the artist’s mind, which will bring together, sitting naked on the blue ceramic bench of a hammam, a panel of eleven female politicians discussing inconsequentially the future of the world, without even noticing the presence of the artist, and without any interaction with her although she rubs their backs and administers care. This chillingly cynical performance is already announced by this series of large, frozen, frontal, life-size portraits of the female politicians the artist challenged in 2021, as well as by two group scenes in conversation inside the hammam and two scenes of sapphic voluptuousness. This series was previously shown in spring 2025 in a museum context at the Städtische Galerie in Karlsruhe.
 
ARCO
Stand 7C28, Hall 7
IFEMA Madrid, Spain
From April 04 to 08, 2026
 
// Kubra Khademi