During the Taliban's* reign in the late 1990s, fashion, music, and cinema were banned. After the Islamists were ousted by a US invasion in 2001, it took years for the Afghan art scene to revive. A group of Afghan designers and models was brave enough to shoot in the streets, displaying traditional garments and talking about their mission. When they were being filmed for the Art at the Stake documentary in 2018, the artists received threats and insults from people who considered their work ‘un-Islamic’. With the Taliban silencing cultural expression once again, will the country’s artistic scene survive?
*officially designated extremist/terrorist organisation in Russia
Authors
Art at the Stake
