I use them [music instruments] as a symbol for women to play her voice with it. She can use musical instruments to talk with people, to speak louder … - Shamsia Hassani

In the past, women were removed from society and they wanted women to stay only at home and wanted to forget about women. Now, I want to use my paintings to remind people about women.“I have changed my images to show the strength of women, the joy of women. In my artwork, there is lots of movement. I want to show that women have returned to Afghan society with a new, stronger shape. It’s not the woman who stays at home. It’s a new woman. A woman who is full of energy, who wants to start again. You can see that in my artwork, I want to change the shape of women. I am painting them larger than life. I want to say that people look at them differently now.

the reasons that I like to do graffiti are: 1- with making graffiti I want to cover all bad memories of war from people’s mind, with colors to cover all bad element of war with my graffiti’s. 2- to introduce art to people with making graffiti, cause as you know afghan people has no chance to visit some art gallery or museums, or they don’t want to go to some art exhibition, so if I do art everybody will enjoy it. In outside it is for longer time and slowly people with memorize it and it will be part of their life when every day they use the same way of that wall, it doesn’t need to ticket as well, it is colorful and bringing some change and give too much color to people’s mind. 3- I could say my words with shape to people, easily, image has more effect then word, and it’s a friendly way to fight, as I am fighting, now, for women rights as well with my art. 4- 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.

I am scared a lot, from bad situation / security problem / close mind people/ feeling unsafe because of my gender …but really happy that I can paint and I can do something: sharing ideas with people, introducing art, make an open gallery in the street, covering bad memories of war from walls and people’s minds.