Shamsia Hussani

Shamsia Hassani (born 1988) is an Afghan street artist and professor in the Fine Arts Department at Kabul University living and working in Afghanistan. She is considered to "Afghanistan's first street artist." Art galleries are scarce in Afghanistan, but there are numerous blank walls. Hussani began painting on walls after seeing the British street artist Chu who held a graffiti workshop in Kabul in 2010. "I want to colour over the bad memories of war on the walls, and if I colour over these bad memories, then I erase [war] from people's minds. I want to make Afghanistan famous for its art, not its war," she told Art Radar in 2013.

Hassani mainly depicts stylized, monumental images of women wearing burqas. According to the artist,"I want to show that women have returned to Afghan society with a new, stronger shape. It's a new woman. A woman who is full of energy, who wants to start again." In an interview the Hassani explained, "I believe there are many who forget all the tragedy women face in Afghanistan that is why I use my paintings as a mean to remind the people. I want to highlight the matter in the society, with paintings reflecting women in Burqas everywhere. And I try to show them bigger than what they are in reality, and in modern forms, in shaped in happiness, movement, maybe stronger. I try to make people look at them differently."

As a female street artist, Hassani is often harassed: "It is very dangerous for a girl to paint in the streets in Kabul," she says, "sometimes people come and harass me; they don't think it is allowed in Islam for a woman to stand in the street and do graffiti."