Report Details Persistent Persecution of Iranian Artists

Courtesy Artistic Freedom Initiative

DOWLOAD THE REPORT HERE

by Anna Lentchner, ArtAsiaPacific

A new 100-page report by the American advocacy groups Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI) and Voices Unbound (VU), in partnership with Berkley Law, details how Iranian artists have been systematically targeted in the aftermath of the “Women Life Freedom” movement in 2022, during which time Iranian security forces are believed to have killed more than 500 protestors and arrested more than 19,000.

Titled “I Create; I Resist: Iranian Artists on the Frontline of Social Change,” the report was released on September 10, ahead of the two-year anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s death in Tehran in September 2022. Arrested for wearing an “improper hijab” and later dying in morality-police custody, Amini became a symbol of female oppression and persecution, with demonstrations in her memory ensuing across Iran and worldwide. Iranian cultural figures in the region and the diaspora were particularly active, and graphics, songs, drawings, photographs, and videos—dozens of which are featured in the report—became essential to the movement’s dissemination and sustenance.

According to the AFI’s and the VU’s research, the Iranian regime ramped up its suppression of cultural figures after September 2022, “including through online surveillance, the creation of celebrity task forces, issuing work bans, and threatening legal action.” The report features interviews with several visual artists who fled persecution before or during this time, such as multidisciplinary artists Jinoos Taghizadeh, who remains in exile in Canada, and Nazanin Noroozi, who has been in the United States since 2012 and fears returning to Iran. Noroozi’s mixed-media collages, which appear to integrate photographs of the 2022 protests, are featured on the cover of “I Create; I Resist,” as well as beside its chapter title pages.

Mirza Hamid, the ‘Banksy of Iran’

Image courtesy of UP MAG. 

by Maura Rosner, UP MAG 

Within the city of Tehran, there is an anonymous street artist The Tehran-based Street muralist who goes by the pseudonym Mirza Hamid. To locals, he is known as the “The Banksy of Iran.” in his home country, where his work is well known. Hamid’s identity is unknown. Hamid’s captivating street paintings depict mostly monochromatic conceptual figures painted with red earth pigment, reminiscent of ancient cave paintings. The photographs of these street murals in Tehran (including some that no longer exist because they were painted over by the city) were taken by Morvarid Khalilzad, whose images are works of art themselves. I recently spoke with Hamid, in a first ever interview. He explained that he uses red earth because it is the first pigment that humans used. It can be found in ancient Persian pottery, in paintings in the Grand Canyon and on Egyptian mummies, where it symbolizes life after death. For him, it is the color of humanity. All of humanity is battling the same red-hued sense of estrangement and exile, he said.

Sometimes Hamid finds unmarked walls on busy streets, in ruins, even on government buildings. After painting, a new story begins for that wall, he said. Once, he painted three murals on one of Tehran’s water department’s walls. All three were painted over the next day, but Hamid received a direct message on Instagram that said, “This is the security guard at the water department, I just wanted to say I did everything I could but was not able to convince my colleagues not to cover your paintings, I’m sorry.” Hamid said this was a particularly meaningful moment.