Women Raise Their Voices On The Walls Of Afghanistan

Women Raise Their Voices On The Walls Of Afghanistan

With change not expected to come from a ballot box, female graffiti artists in Afghanistan take a stand with cans of spraypaint.

With women making up 34 percent of voters in the Afghanistan presidential election held earlier this month, the celebration of a new era for Afghan women has been dominating the headlines of European and American media. But the fight for women’s rights is far from over in Afghanistan, local street artists Shamsia Hassani and Malina Suliman tell MintPress News.

The murals of the country’s most prominent female graffiti writers are — quite literally — drawing attention to struggles and social change in their surroundings and contesting a warped image of Afghan women both locally and internationally.

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Silent shouts of political revolt

“Some people who face injustice and the lack of rights take the bomb to kill us or narcotics to kill themselves. Graffiti is a peaceful way of fighting against the government, against all wrong things,” Kandahar-born street artist Malina Suliman told MintPress.

In her 24 years, Suliman has been subjected to injustice as a woman, as a refugee and as an artist.

Born in the Taliban’s hometown, she was among the first to experience the oppression of the notorious political regime. Aiming to transform Afghanistan according to their perverted interpretation of an Islamic state, the Taliban imposed various sanctions for women’s presence in both physical and symbolical public spaces — sanctions that had a major impact on Suliman’s childhood. Her family eventually immigrated to neighboring Pakistan and stayed there until the Taliban was ousted from power in 2001.

More than two decades on, Afghanistan remains one of world’s worst places for women. The occupation by the United States and its allies has not brought the changes Afghan women were yearning for. The alleged quest to “liberate Afghan women” that was so vocally promoted by Western pro-war propaganda remained the mere domain of gluttonous nationalism and a convenient ploy for concealing the fact that the rise of the Taliban had been initially facilitated by the U.S. as an operation against the Soviet Union.

“Ever since the Taliban took over, my life continues to be full of unexpected changes. Changes that I never want,” Suliman said.

Disappointed by continuous political games and manipulation, she is determined to fight for changes she does want to see. While both local and international authorities ignore her voice and those of fellow Afghan women, the artist has found an alternative avenue for channelling her concerns and aspirations: street art.

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“I get really frustrated and can’t stay in my room. I need to go out, I need to get my frustration out. I need to draw,” she explained.

Street art enables Suliman to exhibit her work despite institutional constraints and limited financial resources. As an illegal artistic intervention, graffiti’s very essence represents an act of revolt, thus posing as an effective medium for rendering graffiti artists’ striking messages of resistance.

Her visual landscapes feature burqa-clad skeletons, prison bars, blood and disabled bodies. For these images, she uses gloomy colors and sharp sketch lines that radiate the notion of hardship and metaphorical claustrophobia felt by Afghan women.

“I meet and talk to people from the community. I listen to them and their problems and then make them into graffiti art,” she said.

By expressing the challenges of the oppressed and the marginalized, she contests unilinear narratives about Afghan women that have been carved out by local authorities and global superpowers. She writes her own uncensored version of history, revealing the aftermath of a three-decade struggle and mourning lives lost.

Although Suliman’s art is appreciated by many — even, surprisingly, Afghan President Hamid Karzai — her revolutionary agenda comes at a high price. Working in an area still controlled by the Taliban and other insurgent groups, she has been exposed to numerous threats. Threatening telephone calls and brutal physical attacks on members of her family forced Suliman to seek temporary refuge in India before she eventually moved to Kabul, the country’s more liberal capital.

“I just wish to go back home,” she said with desperation in her voice.

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Spraying female solidarity

Apart from being a form of grassroots resistance, graffiti art by young Afghans contributes to reinforcing solidarity and facilitating social change within local communities.

“Many Afghan people have no opportunity to visit exhibitions. If I do art that is there for a longer time and does not require paying for a ticket, people will slowly recognize it and it will become part of their lives,” Shamsia Hassani, a Kabul-based graffiti artist born to refugee parents in Iran, said.

On display and accessible to a wide audience, Hassani’s street paintings are filling the gap created by the lack of art and color in people’s lives. Her murals are imbued with motivating messages aimed at passersby, especially women. In a country where female literacy is estimated to be a little under 13 percent, visual messages are significant for reaching people, particularly those on the social margins.

The artist’s work shows Afghan women’s potential for claiming their rights and encourages the audience to unite in the fight for the needed social shift. The stone canvases commonly feature over-sized women with explicit female figures in striking turquoise burqas.

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“My women are big, strong and modern. I capture them in movement and draw them bigger than in real life. I want people to perceive these women differently,” Hassani explained.

In contrast to stereotypical media representations, the artist does not perceive burqas as necessarily oppressive, nor does she see their removal as an act of liberation. She finds the Western equalization of Islamic veils with female oppression patronizing.

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