In partnership with Galerie Eric Mouchet and as part of Kubra Khademi's exhibition, we are organizing an event with the featured artist.

 

On the occasion of the publication of La fille et le dragon, Kubra Khademi’s first graphic novel, to be published by Editions Denoël on September 25, 2024, Galerie Eric Mouchet is delighted to present a selection of the artist’s original works, which were used as a matrix for this publication. Nicole Lapierre, a French anthropologist and sociologist, was invited to write the narrative. Nearly 150 drawings in gouache and gold leaf will be displayed on the gallery walls, a visual journey of the early years of Kubra Khademi’s life, to be unveiled from Saturday 14 September 2024.

 

«It all begins at the end of a seemingly dead-end street. At the end of the street, on the right, there’s a narrow passage that leads out. Finding a way out so that life is not a dead end. Such is the thread of this story...» (Nicole Lapierre).

 

One day in the winter of 1989, in Mashhad, Iran, in a poor family of refugees from Afghanistan fleeing the Soviet army, the Mujahedin and the persecution inflicted by the Afghan Sunnis on the Hazara Shiites, a little girl is born with her hands wide open, a sign of good things to come for the household. She was the sixth of ten siblings. The mullah refuses to choose a name for her and inscribe her in the family Koran. What’s the point? She’s a girl. Finally called Kubra, which means «great», the child showed a gift for drawing from a very early age. It was a gift like a piece of armour, protecting and fortifying her against the horrors of a life under the double fetters of religious and patriarchal fanaticism. Armed with her pencils, brushes and unfailing determination, Kubra heads for Kabul to embark on an incredible odyssey as an international artist. With a sacred mission: to slay the dragon! This is the journey she recounts in drawings, entrusting her story to Nicole Lapierre, who puts it into words. The result is a unique and magnificent book, a book of truth about the invincibility of art, an ode to women, life and freedom.

Press release from Editions Denoël

 

 

Kubra Khademi is a Hazara artist and  performer from Afghanistan born in 1989. In her practice, Kubra Khademi explores her life as a refugee and a woman. In response to an extreme patriarchal society, she began creating public performances in Lahore and continued upon returning to Kabul. After her well-known piece "Armor" in 2015, she was forced to flee the country. In 2016, as a refugee in France, she was awarded the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Nominated for the Révélations Emerige in 2019, she is the 2020 laureate of the 1% marché de l’art of Paris. In 2020, she obtained French nationality and currently lives and works in Paris.