The #NotACrime global street art campaign teamed up with curators and street artists in New York City, as well as in Brazil, South Africa, and Australia, to produce murals highlighting the denial of higher education to Iran's Baha'i religious minority.
IranWire's new series featuring the artists and their murals will continue over the coming months as the #NotACrime project spreads to more cities around the world.
The historic New York Amsterdam News building, which sits on the corner of Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 126th Street in New York, is a monument that is famed for housing one of the oldest and most well-known African-American newspapers in the United States. Established in 1909, the newspaper played a key role in advancing African-American civil rights in the country.
Today, the building is once again involved in promoting the rights of a disenfranchised group. However, this time, it is helping to raise awareness of the situation of the Baha’is in Iran. And it is doing this in the form of a large mural through collaboration with the #NotACrime campaign.
The #NotACrime movement highlights Iran’s long history of denying the Baha’is, its largest religious minority, access to higher education. Given the building’s history in fighting for and more importantly, winning civil rights for African-Americans, it was a logical and natural partnership.
Marina Zumi, who currently lives in Brazil where she is regarded as one of the nation’s most talented female street artists, painted the building’s mural in support of the Baha’is in Iran.
“I come from Argentina, where we’ve also had many years of repression and bad governance,” says Marina Zumi. ‘I’ve tried to make my work more universal, so people here in New York can understand what’s going on in Iran.’
Zumi’s mural depicts a gazelle whose eyes are censored with a red line with the words ‘No Truth No Light’ underneath an image of the Tehran University gates.
“I decided on the gazelle because the animal is native to Iran, and I tried to show repression through darkness, and truth and freedom through light,” she explains. “I really hope that people can connect with the mural, even for a moment, as they walk by it.”
Related articles:
#NotACrime: Alexandre Keto in New York
#NotACrime Global Street Art: Johannesburg
#NotACrime: A Global street art project for human rights in Iran
#NotACrime Street Art Provokes Debate in NYC
#NotACrime Launches Street Art Campaign in NYC to Expose Human Rights Abuses in Iran
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