Since 2001, a new generation of artists has emerged in Afghanistan, after 20 years of war and a Taliban government hostile to artistic forms and cultural practices. But the newfound peace context soon swung into a new war between the Afghan government, the international coalition forces and the Taliban. Serial attacks have weakened the country, targeting the cities and imposing a security of public places increasingly severe until the suicide attack on December 11, 2014 in the auditorium of the French Institute of Afghanistan in Kabul. Fragilized by these security issues, the local cultural and artistic scene has not disappeared. The artists have not been silent, inventing powerful formal answers and the public has not deserted the place, taking risks sometimes vital.

The exhibition presents some sixty works by contemporary artists: photographs, paintings, works of art, videos, installations, calligraphy. This selection presents the most original and most representative works of this generation by reflecting the variety of media and forms they explore to express the horror of the attacks and an omnipresent death in an urban space that has become hostile to its inhabitants and to testify, not without humor, beliefs in a promised and never reached security and the bitter disillusions it provokes.