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While government-sponsored public murals and wall-painitngs are deeply rooted in pop-culture in Iran, independent graffiti - the way it exists in the west - has never been a part of our urban culture, at least not as widely as it is in other countries. The closest thing resembling a graffit I remember seeing in my childhood growing up in Iran was a stenciled "Pink Floyd" sprayed on our concrete garbage bin/box outside our home - and I didn't know what it meant!

So I when I discovered the blog "Iran Graffiti" the other day, I was quite surprised. They (who seem to have been around for more than a year), capture snapshots of graffitis across Iran and post them on the blog. While many of the posted graffiti art seems somewhat juvenile, it's clear that graffiti art is becoming more popular, and you can certainly find some decent stuff in there as well. Interestingly, one of these graffiti artists (self proclaimed "vandal or anarchist") has his/her own blog and gallery as well.

Through IranGraffiti, I also discovered Kolah Studios, which is an underground arts e-zine, and Brainstorm, which is sort of a quarterly underground arts magazine published in pdf form. All these are apparently produced and managed by the same team.