Iranian Street Art: ICY Melts My Heart

by Julie Ashcraft A.K.A. Jigsawnovich


Artist ICY seems to have a heart brimming with the highest form of human love, and it gently reaches out from his art to connect with viewers. Even officers from the LAPD admired his works on paper at the opening of the From the Streets of Iran exhibit at the Crewest Gallery in Los Angeles, California. This may break stereotypes, since ICY got his start as a graffiti stencil artist. ICY told me, "About two years ago, I was working my stencil, Boy in Mindful, in a crowded street of Tabriz, Iran--when suddenly police officers arrested me and took me to a police station. They detained me for about 20 hours. But because this work was not political, they released me."

Undeterred, ICY's work has grown increasingly political, in that it advocates peace from within the context of a regime holding weekly chants demanding death to several countries. For marches celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, ICY made a cardboard cutout painting of a chador wearing woman carrying a child who holds the Persian script word, "Peace." He put this painting on a stick, and it was carried in the marches. I asked him how people there responded. ICY replied, "Some of the people like it, but there are lots of people that reject us and works."

A Tabriz postal worker recently prevented ICY from mailing several paintings to the Crewest Gallery, because the paintings had the color green--associated with the Iranian freedom, democracy and human rights movement. Ironically, a painting by ICY's younger brother, SOT, depicting a man using blood-red paint to cover a stencil of Mousavi's face, successfully made it to the gallery--as Raja Abdulrahim reported in the Los Angeles Times. After suggesting to ICY that perhaps he could enclose his paintings inside more conventional paintings, and attempt to mail them again, I asked whether he did. ICY replied, "No. I sent just two of them, Peace Girl and War against Peace. Protest and Freedom are still in Iran."

Noticing that his fellow artists in the exhibit are all male, I asked ICY whether there are any female Iranian street artists. ICY replied, "Not now, but 5 years ago one female artist, 'Salome,' did some graffiti writing in Tehran."

ICY's work is shown together with work by SOT, FRZ, MAD and CK1 in the exhibit, From the Streets of Iran, which continues through September 26th at the Crewest gallery in Los Angeles. For more information, please visit
www.crewest.com