Shamsia Hassani is widely described as Afghanistan’s first female graffiti artist. She was born in 1988 in Tehran, Iran, to Afghan parents, and began painting murals on the walls of Kabul in 2010. She also taught fine art at Kabul University.
How she started
Hassani discovered graffiti at a workshop in Kabul led by the British street artist CHU. She saw it as a way of taking art to people who would never go into a gallery.
The woman in her murals
Most of her work features the same female figure. She has closed eyes and no mouth, a reference to the way women’s voices are restricted. She often carries a musical instrument, such as a piano or trumpet, which Hassani has described as another way for the figure to speak. Dandelion seeds, a symbol of hopes carried on the wind, recur in her work.
Hassani often chose walls damaged by fighting, painting over bullet marks and cracks.
Dreaming Graffiti
As painting in public became more dangerous, she began a series called Dreaming Graffiti, painting digitally onto photographs of Kabul buildings she could no longer safely reach.
After 2021
After the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Hassani left Afghanistan. She now lives and works in Los Angeles. Her paintings were shown in 2026 at GraffitiStreet gallery in Chichester as part of the exhibition Urban Equinox, and in Spain and Andorra in the exhibition Dones afganeses.
The essentials
- Born: 1988, Tehran, to Afghan parents
- First murals: Kabul, 2010
- Known for: a silent female figure with closed eyes and a musical instrument
- Based: Los Angeles