Can you tell us about the genesis of this immersive project that reflects the experience of Afghan women today?
Caroline Gillet: In August 2021, I began corresponding with Raha, a 21-year-old Afghan woman living in Kabul. She was documenting her daily life through voice notes, which first became a podcast and later an animated series. It was during the creation of the series that I met Kubra Khademi. Together, we began working on this immersive installation. We wanted to bring this testimony to life: we had to intimately share what millions of women and girls are going through. It was a challenge, as we live in a world dominated by images. How can we evoke what is happening over there, and also depict images that are rare: the private lives of women inside Afghan homes? Rather than a speech or a film, we focused on the idea of creating a sensory space that addresses the notion of confinement. How human beings try to adapt to it or resist it.
What does this immersive installation involve?
Caroline Gillet: In concrete terms, the audience is left to themselves inside this Afghan living room. It’s a fully immersive visual and sensory experience: spatialised sound, lighting effects, and projections on the walls transport viewers into another dimension. Personally, I worked on the sound design to recreate the most realistic atmosphere possible. I delved into the over three hundred recordings sent by Raha while she was in Kabul, as well as by some of her family members. As for the atmosphere of Kabul itself, we collaborated with friends who are still there and recorded everyday sounds, bursts of life and ambient noises that exist only in that city. This installation is also a new way of connecting, of feeling close, of recreating a sense of intimacy with these women and with the country. But it’s also a way of sharing everyday life, that oscillation between resistance and optimism, even as horror gradually takes hold and contaminates even the most private of havens.
Why did you choose this room as the setting for the experience, and how did you ensure that this immersion would lead to a moment of awareness for the audience?
Kubra Kademi: The living room is the nerve centre of Afghan social and private life. Today, it is both the last place of resistance and a prison for women. It was important to me to pay tribute to traditional hospitality, but also to the resilience of the people. This meant reconstructing the interior space where women are the central figures. At the beginning of the session, a young woman welcomes the audience as each person removes their shoes and sits in front of a plate. At the centre of the space, I wanted to recreate a dining table set with traditional dishes, drinks, and a generous decor that raises questions about the crisis undermining the country. The installation works through a reconstruction that is both visual and symbolic, where everyday objects take on a philosophical dimension. In addition to local carpets and fabrics, I designed ceramic plates using traditional techniques.
The dining table blends elements of realism and also functions as a narrative arc. There are forty seats, forty plates, and on each plate, a few words. Forty fragments telling the stories of Afghan women, stories of resistance, secret schools, but also of urgency and scarcity. It’s a way to speak of everyday tragedy, of childhoods cut short by forced marriages, or of the hope that things might improve, even as everything tightens around them. The pots and plates also highlight the mental burden in a context of deprivation: how do you feed your family when you’re not even allowed to go outside? It’s through these very simple questions that we trigger awareness. The entire experience is meant to remind us that the situation in Afghanistan continues to worsen. With this installation, we want to make other voices heard in order to tell this collective story.
Interview conducted by Julie Ruocco in January 2025.