Hafiza Qasimi (*1998 in Wardak, Afghanistan) taught herself to paint, earning her living through commissions, painting courses and in her brother’s store. One week after the Taliban took power in August 2021, women were stripped of their basic rights. On July 23, 2022, she left her home country and fled to Iran to join her sister. With the help of her brother, who already lives in Germany, she finally managed to get a visa after eight months.

With my art, I wanted to show that we Afghan women are equal to men and all other people in the world. Before the Taliban came to power, I had my own gallery and taught students. I was part of a group of artists with whom I carried out and developed projects, e.g. the project „Painting in Defense of Women in Bamyan“, where the Taliban destroyed the large Buddha statues, or the mural at the Sayyidal Shuhada School, with which we wanted to give the female students new hope after an attack. I earned my own money and was able to live from my work, I felt free and strong. However, my big goal of studying at an art college, of becoming better, of becoming really good, became unthinkable with the rule of the Taliban. My studio and most of my paintings were destroyed, my life was threatened. Nevertheless, I continued to work in secret and had the pictures I had created in hiding photographed before I burned them to save them.