#NotACrime: A Global Street Art Project for Human Rights in Iran

Ron English painted a version of the three wise monkeys focused on the tools of journalism. Courtesy IranWire.

by Saleem Vaillancourt, IranWire

The #NotACrime campaign launched a global street art project this year with nearly a dozen murals across New York City to raise awareness of Iran’s human rights crisis.

The murals were painted ahead of President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to the United Nations General Assembly opening in September, and developed into the largest ever single-issue mural campaign in the city. Artists from Argentina, Brazil, and the United States kicked it off, with six murals focused especially on the Baha’i religious minority in Iran and the authorities’ repeated attack on their right to higher education. Five more were created to raise awareness of the threats to free expression and jailed journalists in Iran.

A series of murals across the world began later in the year as the New York project inspired new works in Brazil, South Africa and Australia.

Maziar Bahari, who founded IranWire, started the #NotACrime campaign to expose the Iranian government’s abuses of the rights of its own citizens – and in particular to engage a new audience with these issues. Bahari partnered with Street Art Anarchy, an arts production group in New York, to curate the September murals campaign.

The project is considered by the New York street art community to be the largest single-issue mural campaign ever brought to the city. Street Art Anarchy worked with prominent international artists – such as Ron English, Nicky Nodjoumi, Alexandre Keto, and several others – to produce artworks that would inspire conversations about human rights in Iran and the power of the arts to advocate for social issues.

Tehran's answer to Banksy: Mehdi Ghadyanloo hits Britain

Flying cars, magic portals, levitating giraffes … street artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo’s eye-popping murals make Tehran smile – but his paintings also probe Iran’s turbulent past

Mehdi Ghadyanloo in front of his mural in Shoreditch, London. Courtesy The Guardian. 

by Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

On a wall in east London, two giant crows loom over two young women who are swinging a rope. As a child jumps over the skipping rope, he approaches a hole in the ceiling above him. But if he finally jumps high enough to rise above the confines of the concrete ceiling, he will become prey for the waiting birds.

This is a mural by Mehdi Ghadyanloo, an Iranian artist who is about to have his first exhibition in Britain. It is an unexpected addition to the walls of Shoreditch; the neighbourhood famous for its street art rarely sees anything as subtle as this. As if to make the point, a car park nearby is plastered with ugly, third-rate graffiti. Ghadyanloo, by contrast, makes use of trompe l’oeil, the technique invented in the Renaissance of using perspective to create eye-fooling illusions. It is eerily arresting and poetic.

Ghadyanloo has more in common with the metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico than he does with Banksy. Yet in terms of success as a street artist, he is undoubtedly the Banksy of Tehran. Astonishingly, there are over 100 walls in Iran’s capital decorated by Ghadyanloo. His murals are so popular, he tells me, that there are even imitation Ghadyanloos: “Sometimes districts order my works to be painted by other people. There are many copies of my work in Tehran.”

His paintings are not illegal. On the contrary, he was commissioned by the city government to paint them. Nine years ago – in 2006, or by the Iranian calendar, 1384 – “the municipality published a call for artists”. Fresh out of an art course at Tehran University, he applied.

Tehran is a city of blank walls, he explains. “I heard Tehran still has 5,000 blank walls to be painted. They said: ‘You can find your wall and suggest your idea.’ The Beautification Organisation liked my works ...”

No wonder. Ghadyanloo’s murals in Tehran open windows in the sky. He sees them as a utopian protest against the city’s pollution and smog. “Sometimes you have only grey skies. I wanted to paint clear skies. I would like Tehran to be like my works.”

Using his mastery of trompe l’oeil, he paints huge walls with what he calls suggestive moments from unwritten short stories. His scenes are dream-like, ambiguous. Cars fly in space in a science-fiction city. Holes open to reveal blue skies. Fairies peep through the portals. People walk on roofs. “I want to give a smiling moment,” he says.