Walls are critical sites.

They rise with cities and call on faces, names, and

the written word; those strong and those weak, slogans, poems, and
.anthems
We read the walls to discover the dwellers' dreams, who they believe is
sovereign is, as well as those who believe in changing the status quo. We
realize how dissatisfied people come out of their hiding places to write
something on wall in darkness, looking to the future, turning their back on
.the past
Walls remind us of constitutional and Islamic revolutions, reflecting the
.passion of freedom, or the suppressed anger of prisons, from Qasr to Evin
No wall, even if totally white, could be found without a trace of markers and
sprays. Walls and writing never separate; this eternal promise is called
…writing on the city
While the photos of the Shah were shining under the neon lights of Lalezar
Ave, not far from advertisements of urban women with ear-to-ear smiles
holding the latest vacuums or telephones, in alleys and lanes of the Bazar,
Pamenar, and Fewziyeh Square, slogans of Down With Shah were written
during nights. Once the sun rose, government agents took their brushes
.and attacked the words
The day that wall-writings overpowered the cleansing capacity of vehicles,
.the revolution had succeeded
.The Shah died under the colors of aerosol spray
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was an explosion of words. Reflecting on
the demands that were written sprayed and scrawled on the walls led to
.the rapid growth and reinforcement of revolutionary spirit
The whole city realized that the situation was not a normal one. During the
day, streets were overrun with protesters, and by night it was the walls'
.turn to become replete with slogans
The color of most of the wall writing of the Revolution was black. They
were scrawled clumsily and hastily; the work of people not artists, burning
with anger and hatred. Whether in form or in content, they were against
.everything
With revolutionary fervor growing more and more powerful, public
pressure on the government to allow the Ayatollah’s return resulted in
.more and more images. Sprayed murals and graffiti led the Revolution
After the Revolution and the establishment of the new government, writing
on the walls did not stop. For years after the revolution, political parties
and their supporters considered the walls their best and most accessible
.medium
.Revolution was going on the walls
With infighting amongst political groups, wall writing would undergo
several alterations and deletions. This war of words indicated the collapse
.of unities and the beginning of the end for certain voices from the streets
The command for clearing the walls was issued on 18 March 1979. In
parallel to the establishment of new government, this command
systematically removed the voices of the walls Just as the streets, the walls
.became clean, orderly, and obedient
Once the [Iran-Iraq] War broke out, walls started changing face. Narration
.of revolutionary ideals lost their urgency
Despite difference of opinions, all become members a single Ummah.
.Struggle for a better life was replaced by struggle against a common enemy
.Death crystallized on the face of the walls
Walls were now used to narrate heroic stories of life and death, where lives
.became heroic solely because of death
.The war time graffiti reflected the war inside the cities
The kids were dreaming to grow up as soon as possible, so they could die
.and become heroes
.The new walls called people to the frontline of war and death
.But the collective grief was pervasive
The walls of war, with their massive portraits of martyrs, gave observers a
People with open mouths…in khaki or greenfeeling of shame and sin.
.sludge…with guns in their hands…and raged with anger
By the end of Iran-Iraq war and the start of a new era in the early 90s, a
novel concept has been added to the social and political environment of
.Iran: development
Tired of war and death, the people needed to come back to life. Government
directed petrodollars to construction and industry sectors. It was Towers
as well as public and private building rather than minarets which
.penetrated and ascended the city’s sky
Government was torn between which ideology to support: revolutionary or
capitalistic? Buildings rich in materials on the one hand, but extremely ugly
.on the other
The walls of skyscrapers were erected, leaving modest houses lurking in
their shadows. The solution was to color these surpluses in order to hide
.them
.The pivotal slogan of Khatami was civil society
Instead of phrases like hero and martyr, “civilians” was the new word to
take precedence. People were called “voters” rather than Basiji, martyrs or
.a shoppers
But these walls bore no trace of people’s voices. Walls were dominated by
.municipal authorities
During this era, revolutionary and religious ideologies were replaced by
consumption and life, leaving words less prone to appropriation by slogans.
Consistent with this new glamour, pictures replaced words and wall
writing gave way to murals. Politics had found its historic companion: the
.consumer market
The images of men and women were now of a different nature, since they
.intended neither to revolt nor to reach perfection
Heroes of war hid behind billboards of a new Tehran; they become smoke
.plated and pale as new heroes turned them into antiques
.Buying was the new fighting
Tehran had become bigger and more crowded, and management of waste
had become a crucial problem for the municipality. With its key slogan,
“Our city is our home” , the government asked people not to throw trash on
the street just like they don’t in their homes. They forgot to mention if they
!can think freely on the street the way they used to think in their homes
Tehran is like an iceberg, of which just a small part shows itself in streets
and the larger part flows underground. A city associated with fear under its
.skin, another life is going on beneath the surface
.The subway… that nested underground
Walls of subway stations, which are adjacent to urban sewer pipes, are
.golden spaces for merchants of ads and money
The subway, with its ad saturated walls, has proven that Iran's dream of
exporting the Revolution, was far from realized– in fact they couldn't even
.export it to the underground of the very streets from which it was borne
War pictures and revolutionary slogans have a neutral function located in
.shapeless and dim corners
Ahmadinejad’s government believed that revolution should return to its
origins. Only this time they have tried to inject an ideology with a modern
.look and cinematic feel
Images of the revolutionary leaders have changed accordingly, from
.serious and furious portraiture, to gentle and smiling
.The leader smiles in the new photos
Despite of all of this, something new colored on the walls. Illustrations of
.nature and villages on the walls of a city full of impurity
A huge gap between aims and promises marked the current situation. The
illustrations of flowers and trees, birds, rivers and seas reveal a huge
.nothingness
The illustrations are clearly lying. They are no longer reflecting the street
revolutions or the instruction of entering paradise. They propagate
.-nothing, speaking only to a total idleness -inefficacy
The municipality's illustrators promote a fake nature to people, rather than
.a real one
In the 2000s, names and signs of Iranian villagers found their way on the
walls, with their local clothing, shown mostly as working in the farms and
rice paddies. As if everyone should return to their kin, the village and a
.clean life
This is expression of hopelessness and defeat, where a society that has
failed to such a degree feels it’s only recourse is to restore the village
condition. The main artist of these illustrations wants to portray the
citizens as culpable, this after all the years promising paradise. The
illustrations whisper to the passersby, ”Go back, Tehran is a beautiful city,
".but its people are bad
Late in 2008, with the tenth presidential election, people again return to
the streets. During the time known as Green Movement, after many years of
societal homogeneity protest slogans reappeared on the walls. People once
.again found happiness
One centuries ago in Ghajar Period , Historically this symbol signaled to city
residents that those living in the marked house were suffering from an
epidemic disease such as cholera. Cholera symbols returned after the
Presidential elections of 2009. Those protesting against the declared
election results, when faced with the violence of the police, would often be
forced to run and take refuge in homes. The police would then mark the X
on the doors of those homes, to signify that these were places infected by
.the cholera of protest
Walls are continuous, homogenous, strong, firm, solid structures of bricks,
stone, cement, wood, metal, etc. where thickness is thin in comparison to
length and height. The wall surrounds and protects a building or area, or
.serves as separator of spaces which function like rooms
Although walls function as mirrors for the city, they still cannot reflect the
faces of the people. What they reveal is the huge -robust- government
standing before them, refusing to step aside. Informal graffiti and street art
.appear only when the government slightly steps aside
Graffiti is interested in ruins. The destroyed walls and ruins. They advertise
the rubbish. They remind us of the mechanisms that have destroyed the
city and its population. Graffiti is Folk art, not driven by the desire for
money but driven by a desire for more attention. And that's why it has to be
clandestine, created by rebels -illegal troops- and always on the run from
.the law
Graffiti insists that we be unafraid, that we be disobedient. It doesn’t ask us
to buy anything, it only asks us to be human. And in the most blunt way
.possible, it asks its audience to take back their city
After two centuries as Iran’s capital, Tehran’s walls have popped up
uninterrupted, forming a high, wide and long city. The walls have spread
widely, as have the messages that mark their surface, from folklore to
music, political speech to the letters of prisoners. The main events have
.appeared on the walls before anywhere else
Old paintings are recolored and their power is renewed. The municipal
workers serve as the new officers of the ruling system. They alone choose
.the messages to be deleted and the ones allowed to remain
The restroom walls, which for decades functioned as de facto political
.white boards, reemerged and once again found prominence
These small rooms of physical and mind excretion have long been the
public space of protest and forgotten hopes, out of the sight of the
.otherwise ubiquitous security cams
!So viva shit -excretion-, viva pissing