Underground Art
Nov 30, 2015This was right next to the stairs on the top, somebody illegally stenciled the person with the crossed-out head into a beautification mural.
This stencil depicts Neda Agha-Soltan, who was born on 23 January 1983 and died during the Green Revolution on 20 June 2009. I saw about three or four of these stencils in Tehran.
Her death drew international attention after she was shot dead during the 2009 Iranian election protests. According to Human Rights Watch, “she was a philosophy student who was a bystander to the protests when she was shot in the chest on Kargar Street. At the time of the shooting, Agha-Soltan was not actively protesting, according to her relatives and eyewitnesses. She had been traveling in a private car stuck in traffic several kilometers from the main protests at Azadi Square, and had just stepped out of the car. Numerous witnesses have stated that there were no active clashes between protesters and security forces in the area where she was shot.”
The murderer of Neda is disputed. According to CNN, BBC, and Fox News she was shot by Basij. According to Iranian media, she was shot by Arash Hejazi. Her death was captured on video by bystanders and broadcast over the Internet and the video became a rallying point for the opposition. It was described as “probably the most widely witnessed death in human history”. Her death became iconic in the struggle of Iranian protesters against the disputed election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
According to a friend in Tehran, it says “Made By Homeland” at the bottom of Mona Lisa’s shawl. He doesn’t know why and he thinks the stencil has nothing to do with the Green Revolution.
Last but not least, this is neither a stencil nor a beautification project: It’s simply a pretty awesome advertisement for a male gym, in Bandar Abbas.
