Kubra Khademi

She had been called upon to imagine the poster for the Festival, shortly before the fall of Kabul into the hands of the Taliban in August 2021.

We can see five naked women, symbols of freedom.

A freedom that Afghan performer and painter Kubra Khademi has cherished since fleeing her country in 2015.

That year, the 33-year-old artist walked for a few minutes on a Kabul street wearing 'anti-touching' metal armor that hugs the shape of her breasts and buttocks, to speak out against harassment of street.

Death threats followed, forcing him into exile.

"I was surrounded by angry people who said to themselves + we are going to kill her +", she told AFP.

In France, this feminist from the province of Ghor (central Afghanistan) and passed through the Fine Arts in Kabul, found "a second life".

At the Lambert Collection in Avignon, she presents an exhibition, with paintings similar to mythological frescoes (two naked women stabbing a dragon) or more realistic (kalashnikov, faceless head of a Taliban).

"I am from an Afghan generation that grew up with peace, education, art, the internet, the possibility of doing things", recalls the artist who has helped dozens of artists to leave Afghanistan .

"Today, I am 200% free, and I dedicate every moment to art to make my voice heard".

Hanane Hajj Ali

Lebanese actress and director Hanane Hajj Ali poses on July 4, 2022 in Beirut Joseph EID AFP / Archives

Two things allow the actress and director Hanane Hajj Ali "to cope with all the disasters that have befallen Lebanon": morning running in Beirut and the theater.

Her piece "Jogging", which she presents at the Avignon Festival, is like a summary of everything that is wrong in the Mediterranean country undermined by an unprecedented financial crisis for more than two years.

Written before the crisis, the play was a bit prescient.

"Every time I ran in Beirut, I smelled like a smell of corruption and rot."

She embodies in turn herself current to avoid osteoporosis, obesity and depression, but also Medea.

"There are contemporary Medees, these women who send their children into the boats of death", driven by the ravages of war and misery.

Hanane Hajj Ali, who refused to submit her play to the Department of Censorship in Lebanon, had it toured in fifty countries.

“Our presence as artists from the Middle East on the world stage is all the more important with the rise of extremism,” she says.

Rasha Omran

During the three years that followed his exile from war-torn Syria for denouncing the repression of Bashar al-Assad's regime, Rasha Omran could not write a single word.

"Not being able to return to your country is a wound, a lack," says the Syrian poet, one of the most eminent in her country, who has been living in Cairo since 2012.

At the Festival d'Avignon, she will be part of the reading cycle "Shaeirat" ("poetesses" in Arabic).

Her collection, "The one who lived in the house before me", evokes an intimate story, written after occupying, alone in Cairo, an apartment that once belonged to a solitary Greek woman.

"I felt like I was his reincarnation," she told AFP.

A contemplation in solitude but also in menopause, called in Arabic "the age of despair", an expression "ridiculous", according to her.

She sees her poetic project as an "act of resistance", and keeps a slim hope for her country.

“Entire generations are underground or outside Syria, but the wheel is turning.”

© 2022 AFP