On the afternoon of Feb. 26, 2015, the artist Kubra Khademi strapped a suit of metal armor over her clothes and headed outside. The armor, which she had cobbled together in the workshop of a local blacksmith, had bulbous breasts and an ample bottom. It was the centerpiece of a carefully planned street performance.

Only this wasn’t just any street: It was a busy thoroughfare in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Sheathed in her bulging suit, Ms. Khademi walked along the road in a silent eight-minute performance. By the time she left, traffic had stopped and a mob of menacing men had formed.

“They were insulting me and making fun of me, saying ‘She’s crazy, she’s a foreigner, she’s lost her mind, she’s a prostitute,’” the artist recalled in a telephone interview from Paris, where she now lives. “Yet, had I not put on this performance, I would have been unhappy. It was a complete success. It shook everyone up, and brought the debate brazenly out into the open.”