Kubra Khademi invites her compatriot and friend Sher Ali on Galerie Eric Mouchet’s stand for the upcoming 9th edition of Asia Now Paris 2023 at the iconic Monnaie de Paris (October 20-22, 2023).
Both artists in exile (Khademi in France since 2015, Ali in Australia since 2021) paint with gouache on paper in the continuity of the Mughal tradition of miniature that they initially learned at the Art High School in Kabul. Through this media, they intend to share with the world their love for their country and for freedom.
Sher Ali fled Afghanistan after the Taliban took Kabul in August 2021, and personally experienced the gathering with thousands of people in an airport which was both a concentrate of misery and, for only some of them, the last door to hope and freedom. Ali’s works that we’re featuring are toughly depicting the moment of the evacuation, highlighting the situation’s disturbing disregard for human life.
While Ali mixes in his paintings realistic images of contemporary exile with skillfully traditionally painted settings, Khademi’s works that we are featuring use metaphoric images to illustrate her daily fight against patriarchy, ignorance and violence. The artist offers us a colorful pantheon of the human weaknesses and virtues in the guise of epic kings and mythical animals, as they were previously described by Ferdowsi in the 10th century in his Shahnâma. Rooted in ancestral traditions these images remain today very contemporary and obvious to every member of the Persian culture community.
In addition, the collective Slavs and Tatars invited for this new edition of Asia Now as guest curators will present some textile artworks by Kubra Khademi and displayed inside the Monnaie de Paris.