page_title: Shamsia Hassani
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Shamsia Hassani / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Graffiti at Darul Aman Palace, Kabul, Afghanistan, by Shamsia Hassani.
context_page_description: Shamsia Hassani is an Afghan graffiti artist, a fine arts lecturer, and the associate professor of Drawing and Anatomy Drawing at the Kabul University. She has popularized "street art" in the streets of Kabul and has exhibited her art in several countries including India, Iran, Germany, United States of America, Switzerland, Vietnam, Norway, Denmark, Turkey, and Italy, Canada, and in diplomatic missions in Kabul. Hassani paints graffiti in Kabul to bring awareness to the war years. In 2014, Hassani was named one of FP's top 100 global thinkers.
context_section_description: Hassani was born in 1988 and spent her childhood in Iran; her parents had temporarily immigrated there, from Kandahar, Afghanistan during the war. Hassani showed interest in painting from a young age. While in the ninth grade, Hassani lacked access to art classes, as it was not permitted to Afghans in Iran. Upon her return to Kabul in 2005, she pursued a degree at Kabul University in arts. Shamsia holds a BA degree in Painting and a master's degree in Visual Arts from Kabul University in Afghanistan.
  She later began lecturing and eventually became the associate professor of Drawing and Anatomy Drawing at Kabul University, establishing Berang Arts, a contemporary art collective. Creating colorful graffiti, Hassani works to mask the negativity of war. She claims that, "image has more effect than words, and it's a friendly way to fight." She also uses her art to fight for women's rights, reminding people of the tragedies women have faced and continue to face in Afghanistan.
  Hassani studied the art of graffiti in Kabul in December 2010 during a workshop hosted by Chu, a graffiti artist from the United Kingdom. Following the workshop, Hassani began to practice street art on walls in the streets of Kabul. Because graffiti supplies are cheaper than supplies for traditional art forms, Hassani chose to continue with the art form. One of her works is on the walls of Kabul's Cultural Centre, and features a burqa clad woman seated below a stairway. The inscription below it reads (in English), "The water can come back to a dried-up river, but what about the fish that died?" In order to avoid public harassment and claims of her work being "un-Islamic", she completes her work quickly (within 15 minutes).
caption: Graffiti at Darul Aman Palace, Kabul, Afghanistan
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