Afghanistan is a country in turmoil. After three decades of war, the country is set to go through some testing times with Afghan presidential elections and the withdrawal of most foreign combat troops looming in 2014.

Living under the city’s grey shadow, Shamsia Hassani, probably Afghanistan’s first serious female graffiti artist, says, “Our country has been ravaged by war. You can see it in the gaping holes in the concrete walls when you walk around Kabul. It is a city devoid of colour.”

But the violence is not what the 24-year-old wants to focus on. An associate professor of sculpture at Kabul University, she instead recites a translated Dari poem – ‘The water can come back to a dried-up river, but what about the fish that died?’ “When I heard this poem,” she says, “I thought how it was about the situation in Afghanistan. A lot of people died in the war; now the situation is better, but those people cannot come back.”

Hassani’s family is originally from Kandahar, which served as the capital of the Taliban government from late 1994 to 2001, until it was toppled by the US-led NATO forces in late 2001. She was born in Iran, where her parents were refugees, and says she was always interested in art. “I started drawing when I was four or five, but most people give it up. I had no teacher, but I continued.”

When she reached ninth grade, when art classes begin in Iran, she was told that they were not open to Afghans; so she studied accountancy instead until her family returned to Kabul about eight years back. She made up for lost time at the University art department, but chafed at the traditional bias, and started exploring contemporary art.

In August 2010, Hassani, along with others at the University, attended a 10-day organized by Combat Communications a small anonymous group of artists founded in 2010 year with the aim of advocating/promoting free expression through Afghan youth in Afghanistan. This is when she was introduced to graffiti art by British artist Chu and was taken in by its mass appeal. “Spray cans and stencils have more impact than traditional art. If you have an exhibition, only those with means can attend it. But graffiti is out there on the walls and is open to everyone for viewing. It doesn’t discriminate.”

The obstacles in a city at war, policed by jittery security forces, discouraged most other students on Chu’s course, even though the high walls and giant concrete blast barriers are a tempting blank canvas. So Hassani works in abandoned buildings, cultural centers and roads such the Darul Aman road, which houses a beautiful European-style palace built by King Amanullah Khan in the early 1920s that was unveiled as the seat of Afghanistan’s future parliament in 2005. Like most places in the city, the palace has not been refurbished and was reportedly part of the targets in the attacks launched on April 15, 2012, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

A lot of her work features fish, trapped and silent in their watery universe, or women in burqas, with a modern silhouette, with hips and sharp shoulders. She uses the image to talk about women’s rights and the problems women in Afghanistan face. She changes the shape of the silhouettes from sad to happy, because she feels women’s lives can also change for the better. “When the war came, it seemed the country forgot about its women. War was a male space. Now since the war is over, women have the opportunity to express themselves.”

Hassani feels that though a lot has been written about the burqa, it is issues like child marriage, forced marriage and divorce laws in Afghanistan that need more attention.

Education is one of the ways Hassani thinks the plight of women can improve. Art is another. “Art can bring change, I am sure. If people see an artwork, it will perhaps only cause a small shock to their mind, but that can grow and grow.”

Hassani is a founding member of a contemporary art collective, ‘Berang’ which means “colourless”. “If just 20% of students were interested, if every year we graffiti twenty walls around Kabul, in two or three years we will have lots of art on walls around the city,” she says, insisting that this will lend a healing touch to the war-torn nation and help colour bad memories.

Hassani has also developed a special form of graffiti she calls ‘fantasy graffiti’, to “add colour to a colourless city.” “If you stand in the street, you face problems; because of this I started a new style of graffiti. I take pictures of places I like in the city, open them in a programme like Photoshop and do digital designs. Or I print out a picture of the street and then do graffiti with a paintbrush. If you scan it back, it looks like real graffiti, but of course it isn’t.”

Security is still a major problem in war-torn Afghanistan. The country was ranked as the world’s most dangerous country for women, with Congo taking a close second position, a Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll has said in 2011.

A collection of her ‘fantasy graffiti’ was recently showcased in the Embassy of Netherlands and Canadian Embassy in Kabul.

Hassani’s graffiti trails have taken her places. She is just back from Switzerland where she was busy at work with her spray cans, and she also attended talks on women’s rights.

“Every artist is like a country, every artist has a different kind of language, different rules. When one country writes something, people from another country can’t read it. They need translation. For example, my alphabet has fish, bubbles, women in burqas, some colours that I always like to use. I want to tell a women’s version of Afghanistan through my art.”