By Ellaha Rasa
Roya* is one of the few artists in Herat who prefers to create nude art and life paintings. It’s a style of art depicting naked or semi-naked women’s bodies that some in the art world consider taboo, let alone the people in her community.
When the Taliban took power in 2021, the 32-year-old stopped painting and burned at least 10 of her artworks because she was afraid of what could happen if the Taliban discovered them in their house-to-house searches.
The paintings had been created in secret; Roya burned them in secret too.
“I had no choice but to burn my works. I had to do it. Only two paintings were left,” Roya says. “Most of my works were in erotic style and they all burned in front of me. I wish I had never witnessed that moment with my own eyes.”
She cried a lot while her works burned, she says, recalling it as one of the most difficult moments of her life.
Roya has been seriously pursuing painting and miniatures for more than a decade. Even before the Taliban set up their de facto government, nude-style art was not welcomed in the traditional and conservative culture of Afghanistan.
It was almost impossible for Roya to find a life model for her work, and so she used to find a model to work from the internet. But the Herati culture meant Roya never display her works or hold an exhibition. It was difficult due to the potential backlash of the society around her as well as the more serious threat of religious extremists.
Things only got worse once the Taliban took power. Very quickly, female faces in shop fronts or display windows were covered over. Some artists even claim that they were told to only depict women without faces. For an artist like Roya who has honed her talent with nudes that display much more of the female form than a face, it has been more challenging.
Roya says the restrictions on artistic activities have driven many painters to leave Afghanistan with many still attempting to leave.
Photo: submitted to Rukhshana media.
For her, homebound and without freedom to do the art she aspires to do, Roya has stopped doing art alogether. She says as long as the Taliban remain in Afghanistan, she will not create art and she has no motivation to do so.
“The Taliban banned us from painting portraits. If they knew that I used to draw erotic paintings, they will surely imprison me. We artists have no choice but to leave the country,” she says.
Roya says her interest in capturing the art of the human form came about by accident. One day when she saw some women undressed in a women’s public bath, she was intrigued and inspired. As soon as she returned home, she took out a sheet of paper and a pencil and quickly sketched the scene of several women’s bodies she had witnessed. But when her mother saw the work, she was shocked and ripped it from her, tearing up the sheet of paper and throwing it in the trash.
Roya’s mother told her that drawing a naked body is a sin under Islam and she should never do such work again. “When my mother saw my painting, she got very angry and quickly said, ’You will never paint the naked body of women again’. I also promised in the moment that I would not do it again. But secretly I continued to paint women’s bodies and sometimes I painted them in my dreams.”
Eventually, Roya was able to persuade her mother – with some difficulty – that drawing nudes is a form of art and she should not censor her interest. When she finally received her mother’s approval, she was extremely relieved.
Roya had finished school and entered the art faculty at Herat University before the Taliban 2021 takeover. She describes the period of going to university as the best days of her life because of how much she was able to learn and grow in the art department while painting and studying miniatures in the university environment.
But her preferred form of life art was not permitted at Herat University, and Roya could never paint naked women’s bodies in class. That art was relegated to her personal studio at home to improve her skills. “Our teacher was a man in the painting workshop. We sometimes worked on depicting a half-naked male torso from a photo, but our teacher never chose a half-nude female figure for us to practice.”
Roya dreams of a day when her life art is exhibited in galleries around the world. But for this to happen, she needs to practice and wishes first for a day that she can resume her work as a nude painter.
Like Roya, other artists with a gift for life drawing have faced similar challenges and in some cases, serious opposition from family and community.
Zarifa*, 23, was a student in Herat University’s fine arts faculty until the Taliban’s order to ban women from attending universities. Now she spends her days and nights under the roof of the house without any special activities.
As the only artist in her family, she enjoyed painting nudes and life drawings, but her family would burn her works and did not allow her to pursue the craft seriously. When she talks about the artworks being burned, she cries, calling them the most painful memories of her life.
“I will never forget the incident,” she says. “I am sad that my family took several months of my efforts and turned them into ashes in a few minutes.”
She says the depiction of a nude human form goes against her family’s values.
Zarifa says that while she does not have any works of an erotic nature anymore, she is able to create such works in the shortest possible time and with great precision. “I first learned to paint the human body and erotic style art in an amateur way. But once I went to university, I was able to pursue the craft with much more skill. It’s a pity that my family stopped me in the belief that drawing the human body is a great sin in Islam. They ruined all my painting patterns.”
During her university days, Zarifa painted most of her human body art based on Russian and Italian painters’ patterns. She says that she has learned a lot from following those works. “Unfortunately, few people worked in the erotic style during the previous regime, and most of their paintings were hidden,” she says. “Now that the Taliban came, we cannot work at all and we have to spend our days and nights at home.”
Zarifa hopes to be able to convince her family to allow her to continue creating life artworks, but she notes that many painters have stopped working due to the fear of the Taliban. “If my family allows me to work to paint erotic works, I still have to archive all the works in order to be able to exhibit them at the right time,” she adds.
Like dozens of female students of Herat University, Zarifa is waiting for the day when the gates of the university will reopen for them and they can continue to paint as they wish with more freedom.
But she is also working towards a creating a culture among her own family and hopes it happens in all families where there is less extremism and people allow their children to create and design where their art takes them, so they don’t grow up heavy with regret in their hearts.
Both Roya and Zarifa see their erotic artworks as standing up to the more extremist aspects of Afghanistan’s traditional society where even seeing a woman’s face can be taboo.
They would like their art to be part of the conversation of what restrictions should be allowed to be imposed on women. They believe a woman should be able to freely decide on what she wears and what her presence should be in the family and community. Part of that freedom includes a painter being able to frame their works on a wall without fear or concern for their safety.
The two women hope that by one day exhibiting their artworks, it helps towards breaking down the taboos and ideas controlling women. But for now, they accept that revealing any such art is deeply controversial and puts their own lives at risk.
