Faszination. Emotion. Sensation.
Moshtari Hilal (b. Kabul) is an artist and illustrator based in Hamburg, Germany.
With her body of often semi-autobiographical work, she aims to generate an understanding for the complexity of identities. She illustrates hybrid characters in order to question stereotypes and the idea of strict collective identities. Her portraits explore the possibilities of beauty and storytelling within a political environment through faces. Her work was on display in Germany, Afghanistan, Denmark, USA, Canada.
At the moment she is studying Middle-Eastern-Studies and politics in Hamburg
and works as a freelance illustrator.
Photocredit: Elif Kücük
2012 visited her birthplace Kabul to explore its art scene, culture and to meet other artists. She painted at Afghanistan’s first rock festival and staged a live painting with a local artist. She also painted two street art wallpaintings at the courtyard of the artist restaurant “Venue” in Kabul.
2014 was on display in New Jersey at the exhibition Art Amongst War: Visual Culture in Afghanistan 1979-2014. The TCNJ-Art Gallery showed four of her drawings representing the contemporary art from an Afghan-Exile-perspective. The New York Times described her work as “trauma-themed ink-on-paper“ of an “émigrés or children of émigrés“
2016
September in Hannover: opened the postcolonial and post-migration interdisciplinary festival CLINCH with her exhibition “Empathy wont save us” and discussed the possibilities of art for a social change at the opening panel. // September in Hamburg: staged a political street art performance in collaboration with W3 - Hamburg #Refugeetoo // November in Berlin: was invited by the award-winning author Senthuran Varatharajah to the LCB to present her exhibition "The Girl with the Moustache".
2017
February : Host of a book review with the promising and awarded author Senthuran Varatharajah about his debut novel "Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen" at the W3 -Hamburg. // March: invited by writer, sociologist and performance artist Grada Kilomba to attend an artist talk with illustrator Tasnim Baghdadi at Studio R, Maxim-Gorki-Theater, Berlin. // April: Host of the first Bubble Talk "Wish you were Queer" with Turkish photographer Ceren Saner and Missy Magazine journalist and fashion blogger Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, organized by Yesim Duman in collaboration with the Heinrich Böll Stiftung at Golem Hamburg. // Installation of a portrait series during a talk about identity with writer Senthuran Varatharajah and musician Derya Yildrim at Bunker Salon: Identität in resonanzraum, Bunker in Hamburg.
Selection of projects and commission work
Literarisches Colloquium Berlin
Missy Magazine (Online/Print)
Lukas Birk - We were drawn here
W3- Werkstatt für internationale Kultur und Politik
CLINCH - interdisziplinäres postkoloniales Festival
Sound Central Festival - No.2 Kabul