Shamsia Hassani

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Shamsia Hassani in front of a house wall with a female figure she made. Hassani wears a respirator and her dark hair peeks out of a headscarf.
Shamsia Hassani (2017)

Shamsia Hassani ( Persian شمسیه حسنی; born 1988 ) is an Afghan graffiti artist. She dedicates her portraits to women threatened by the Taliban ; she is the first female graffiti and 3D street art artist in Afghanistan. Shamsia Hassani's art has been exhibited worldwide and can be seen on walls in Afghanistan, United States , Italy , Germany , India , Vietnam , Switzerland , Denmark , Norway and other countries. Before the Taliban took power in August 2021, she was a professor ofFine Arts at the University of Kabul .

Life

Shamsia Hassani strikes the same pose as her graffiti character in the background: hands clasped under her chin. Hassani wears a blue headscarf and her dark hair is easy to see. The graffiti shows a woman with a red headscarf and purple clothing.
Shamsia Hassani with the Secret Series in Kabul (Afghanistan, 2016)
A purple hued, headscarf-wearing female figure holding a flying piano keyboard is seen here
Prestige Series in New York, USA
Standing woman drawn in graffiti with a skyline in shades of blue on the dress. The figure wears a headscarf and hair is blowing out of it. She holds a guitar, mostly hidden behind her body. The background is two-thirds dark. Tanks can be seen leaving bright tracks in the darkness.
Prestige Series in New York, USA

Shamsia Hassani grew up in Iran as the daughter of Afghan parents . She started painting as a child. While attending school in Iran, she had limited access to education due to discriminatory laws against Afghan refugees. In 2001, her family felt the situation in Afghanistan was stable enough to return home. There she studied painting at the University of Kabul in 2009 , graduating with a Bachelor of Arts, and attended a workshop on the art of graffiti with the British artist Chu in 2010. She also has a master's degree in fine arts. Since graduating, Hassani has worked first as a lecturer in fine arts and later as an associate professor for drawing and anatomical drawing at Kabul University. She had to give up this position when the Taliban took power.

plant

Her work focuses on the precarious situation of women and girls in Afghan society, which is dominated by men.

Hassani was on the 2014 list of top 100 global thinkers compiled by Foreign Policy , a US foreign policy magazine . Hassani is portrayed in the children's book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls , a collection of portraits of women from around the world who make a difference.

The artworks of Shamsia Hassani often depict women in burqas and headscarves associated with fish, musical instruments and other objects. Hassani describes it like this: “I try to show them larger than they really are - and more modern. That's how they appear stronger. I try to get people to look at them differently.”

“A veiled woman does not lose her identity through the headscarf. She has the same rights as every other person in a society.”

– Shamsia Hassani

Various emotions are expressed in bright colors and geometric shapes in Hassani's work: longing and defiance, hope and heartache, freedom and fear. Special features of her characters are the faces of her protagonists, where long eyelashes falling over closed eyes are depicted. Hair that comes to light under headscarves and sometimes peeks out of it unruly. The figures have no mouths and occasionally there are additional elements from nature. “Their eyes are closed because usually there is nothing good for them to see, not even their future. But that doesn't mean they're blind.”

She uses this form of art to make her ideas about modern Afghan women visible in a public space that is accessible to all. Hassani gives them strength, joy, dynamism and energy. “Graffiti became a tool for me to transform the war-torn walls of my city into colorful paintings. I wanted to hide my city's war stories with colors so people see new things instead of cracks and bullets."

Her work is always associated with a security risk, graffiti is not illegal in Kabul, rather she is confronted with the conservative values ​​of passers-by, who often criticize her form of publicity through art. It's not primarily because of her art, but also because she's a woman. Hassani began decorating Kabul's concrete walls with small graffiti. In the Dreaming Graffiti series , she painted over digital photographs of buildings or overlaid colors and other images using Photoshop. Hassani's extensive body of work includes graffiti, large canvases and miniature series on dollar bills - a nod to US foreign policy .

Hassani reacts to attacks by the Taliban and other extremist groups with art. This creates harrowing images of pain and loss, such as in November 2020 after an attack on Kabul University, where Hassani was working at the time.

Hassani's art is well known at home and abroad. She is internationally networked through social media such as Facebook , Twitter and Instagram . In 2021 she was included in the BBC 's 100 Women list .

  • A woman dressed in yellow with a purple headscarf is sitting on a street that leads above a row of high-rise buildings.

    Once Upon a Time Series , Oslo, Norway

  • There is a visual gap on the sidewalk. In shades of blue, a few high-rise buildings appear in a kind of gorge. Two children are standing on the sidewalk at the "edges" of this ravine.

    3D graffiti, Kabul, Afghanistan

  • Hassani is standing on a bench and is working on a graffiti that covers the entire wall. You can see a woman with yellow clothes and a light-colored headscarf. She carries piano keys through a city backdrop that is upside down.

    Birds of No Nation , Hamburg, Germany.

  • Hassani is standing in front of a house wall. On this is a female figure in shades of gray and blue. She holds a piano keyboard behind her back like a grand piano. She wears a headscarf with her dark hair flowing out of it.

    Birds of No Nation Series , Los Angeles, USA

  • Hassani can be seen at work. She sprays graffiti while passers-by pass by in the right-hand section of the picture.

    Graffiti at Darul Aman Palace, Kabul, Afghanistan

  • A finished graffiti on a wall can be seen. In the right half of the picture passers-by walk by and look at it.

    Graffiti at Darul Aman Palace, Kabul, Afghanistan

  • A blue female figure sits painted on the wall on the very dilapidated staircase of a ruined house.

    What About the Dead Fish , Kabul, Afghanistan

Taliban takeover

A road leads out of a tunnel and is suddenly demolished. At the torn end sits a woman dressed in yellow and with flowing dark hair. A city backdrop is indicated in the background and some bats are fluttering around the woman.
Once Upon a Time Series at Kabul University, Afghanistan

Since the Taliban took power in Kabul in August 2021, Shamsia Hassani has exclusively used social media such as Twitter to share her graffiti. On August 10, a few days before the fall of Kabul, she posted a graffiti on Twitter entitled Nightmare . A woman holding a musical instrument is shown surrounded by men with guns. On the day the Taliban took Kabul, August 15, she created a picture showing a woman with a flowerpot in front of an armed man. Three days later, she posted the image Death to darkness , in which the flowerpot is knocked to the ground and the woman is on her knees in front of the armed man, crying. Both images show the woman dressed in bright blue, while everything else, including the armed man, is black.

Hassani, who continues to post pictures, has been in an undisclosed location since taking power so as not to endanger herself. Female artists are in a particularly dangerous position in Afghanistan: as women and as creative people, they are the focus of the Taliban, who see art as a violation of their strict interpretation of Islamic law. "Some people think that art is not allowed in Islam and think they have to stop me," Hamsani said in an interview with Deutsche Welle . “My country and my art gave me an identity. The day Kabul fell I couldn't believe it; my heart burned.” Many of her works have since been removed and painted over by the Taliban.

“I used to believe that art is stronger than war, but now I know that war is stronger and everything we have built in 20 years can be destroyed by its darkness in minutes. The reason I'm still painting here is because I want to stay afloat and not drown in this darkness.”

– Shamsia Hassani

Several prominent Afghan artists have deleted their social media accounts following the Taliban takeover. Some of them remained active, also Shamsia Hassani continues to publish her works on social media. Hassani's art was picked up and shared by A Mighty Girl on Facebook to encourage people to donate to organizations helping local Afghans, including Women for Afghan Women .

backgrounds

Afghanistan has been in almost constant conflict since 1978. Decades of war destroyed much of the literature and art in Afghanistan, which was once a culturally rich country. This loss sparked a departure in the art world, traditionally dominated by upper-class men, which led to the founding of various organizations.

Numerous groups of street artists emerged in Kabul, conveying political messages for social change in Afghanistan with colorful murals. One of these groups is called the ArtLords and was founded in 2014. It's a grassroots movement of artists and volunteers coming together to demand avenues for social change using art as a vehicle. They bring issues such as the empowerment of women, terrorism and corruption into public space. The name is an ironic reference to the warlords who wield much power in Afghanistan.

The cityscape of Afghanistan has changed in recent years since around 2005 as a result of countless attacks by suicide bombers . There were dangerous attacks with car bombs and magnetic explosive devices, targeted terrorist attacks on government buildings, embassies, Shia mosques, shops and restaurants. These facilities are surrounded by barricades and metre-high concrete barriers, and the original cityscape has disappeared behind these structures. The streets around government buildings and embassies have turned into concrete canyons that served as canvases for the ArtLords . Since its inception, the artists organized at ArtLords have created more than 2000 concrete barrier murals in 19 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. They risk arrest and even assassination for this activism.

ArtLords work is no longer open to the public following the Taliban takeover and continues to create new works in exile. The organization has so far evacuated more than 40 artists from Afghanistan and found new collaborations for those in exile.

awards

  • As one of 10 artists, Shamsia Hassani was awarded the Afghan Contemporary Art Prize in 2009.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 2012: Painting, US Embassy in Afghanistan
  • 2017: Traces of Words: Art and Calligraphy from Asia , group show at the Museum of Anthropology at University of British Columbia , Vancouver
  • 2017: Paintings, Seyhoun Art Gallery, Los Angeles
  • 2017: Paintings, Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York
  • 2019: with Jahan Ara Rafi and Nabila Horakhsh: Chahar Chob , Afghanistan Photographers Association (APA), Kabul

Works of art in public space

  • 2012: together with El Mac, mural in Vietnam
  • 2013: Graffiti in Art Management Workshop in Khoj , India
  • 2015: Live graffiti at Oslo Freedom Forum in Spikersuppa Park, Oslo , Norway
  • 2016: Mural as part of the Millerntor Gallery Festival , Hamburg
  • 2016: Graffiti in Los Angeles, California
  • 2017: Graffiti for the exhibition Art in Protest for the Human Rights Program, New York (Oslo Freedom Forum)
  • 2017: Graffiti on the wall of the Leonardo da Vinci Institute, as part of the Biennale Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea in Florence , Italy
  • 2017: Mural painting in Ventura , California
  • 2018: Mural painting for Wide Open Walls in Sacramento , California
  • 2018: Mural painting for the Eugene 20x21 project in Eugene (Oregon)
  • 2018: Graffiti for Istanbul Comic Art Festival , Istanbul , Turkey

literature

  • Elena Favilli, Francesca Cavallo: Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Extraordinary Women. Translated from English by Birgitt Kollmann, Hanser Verlag 2017, ISBN 978-3-44625-690-3 .

web links

Commons : Shamsia Hassani  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

itemizations

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Shamsia Hassani: Afghanistan's first female graffiti artist | DW | 08/19/2021. Retrieved December 30, 2021 (German).
  2. ^ a b c Ruchi Kumar: 'We planted a seed': the Afghan artists who painted for freedom. In: theguardian.com. October 23, 2021, accessed December 31, 2021 (English).
  3. ↑ Steve Rose: Shamsia Hassani: 'I want to color over the bad memories of war'. In: theguardian.com. September 17, 2014, accessed January 1, 2022 (English).
  4. ↑ a b c Shamsia Hassani: Afghanistan's first female graffiti artist. In: StudiBlog. 26 June 2017, retrieved 30 December 2021 (German).
  5. ↑ 'We planted a seed': the Afghan artists who painted for freedom. In: StudiBlog. Retrieved December 31, 2021 .
  6. ↑ APPROPRIATION . In: Interventions and Adaptive Reuse . De Gruyter, 2021, ISBN 978-3-0356-2503-5 , pp. 22–75 , doi : 10.1515/9783035625035-003 ( degruyter.com [accessed 5 January 2022]).
  7. ↑ Skype talk with the Afghanistan graffiti artist Shamsia Hassani. In: Net culture. Retrieved December 31, 2021 (English).
  8. ↑ BBC 100 Women 2021: Who is on the list this year? In: BBC News . December 7, 2021 ( bbc.com [accessed December 31, 2021]).
  9. ↑ a b Old image goes viral claiming to be from Afghan artist Shamsia Hassani. In: OpIndia. 12 September 2021, retrieved 4 January 2022 (British English).
  10. ↑ The voice of the oppressed: Afghanistan's first female graffiti artist. In: Qantara.de. Retrieved January 1, 2022 .
  11. ↑ 'We planted a seed': the Afghan artists who painted for freedom. In: theguardian.com. Retrieved December 31, 2021 (English).
  12. ↑ Artists In and Outside of Afghanistan Depict the Agony of the Taliban Takeover. In: kqued.org. Retrieved January 2, 2022 (American English).
  13. ↑ Bilquis Ghani: Culture and conflict: Kabuli art as public pedagogy. In: tandfonline.com. Informa UK Limited, 30 November 2020, accessed 2 January 2022 (English).
  14. ↑ Home - ArtLords Public Art for Social Transformation. In: artlords.co. Retrieved January 2, 2022 (American English).
  15. ↑ Grant Curtis: Afghanistan's ArtLords use concrete barricades as canvases to promote social change. In: theconversation.com. Retrieved January 2, 2022 (English).
  16. ↑ Afghan street artists haunt warlords with graffiti campaign. In: winews.com. Retrieved January 2, 2022 (English).
  17. ↑ How to help Afghan artists and cultural workers now at risk under the Taliban. In: The Art Newspaper. October 12, 2021, retrieved January 2, 2022 .
personal data
SURNAME Hassani, Shamsia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Afghan graffiti artist
BIRTH DATE 1988
PLACE OF BIRTH Iran