Shamsia Hassani

Shamsia Hassani (born 1988) is a female, Afghani graffiti artist, a fine arts lecturer, and associate professor of sculpture at the Kabul University. She has popularized "street art" in the streets of Kabul. She has exhibited her street and digital art in several countries including India, Iran, Germany, Italy and in diplomatic missions in Kabul. In 2014, Hassani was named one of FP's top 100 global thinkers.
Hassani paints graffiti in Kabul to bring awareness to the war years.

Graffiti in Kabul

Hassani was born in 1988 in Tehran, Iran where her parents had temporarily emigrated from their native Kandahar, Afghanistan during the war years. Hassani showed interest in painting from a young age. While studying in the ninth grade in Tehran she was not permitted to learn art as it was not permitted for students from Afghanistan. On her return to Kabul in 2005 she pursued a degree course at Kabul University in the traditional art form. Later, she joined Kabul University as a lecturer and then as an associate professor of sculpture. She established "Rosht", a contemporary art collective.

Hassani learned graffiti in a workshop in Kabul in December 2010 hosted by Chu, a graffiti artist from the United Kingdom. It was organized by the Combat Communications. Following the workshop she began to practice street art on the walls of houses in the streets of Kabul. She adopted this art form as spray cans and stencils are much cheaper than supplies for traditional art forms. One of her works is on the walls of Kabul's Cultural Centre. It is a burqa clad woman seated below a stairway. The inscription below it, when translated to English says "The water can come back to a dried-up river, but what about the fish that died?" She completes her work quickly, within 15 minutes, to avoid public harassment and claims that her work is “un-Islamic”.

Hassani is also involved in presenting this art work in a digital format through her project titled “Dreaming Graffiti.” This presentation is made in a series in which she paints or "Photoshops colours and images onto digital photographs to explore issues of national and personal security".

In 2014, Hassani was shortlisted for the Artraker Award for her project "The Magic of Art Is the Magic of Life."