 How many people smile at today in this city? How many people vote colorful clouds today in my city? Why my city is so sad? What can I do for my city? What if there were some happy spots in my city while I was, while I'm coming back to home from work? What can I do for my grey city? What is my job? What is my task to do for this grey city that already has 5,000 blank grey empty walls? How can I give this city back the beautiful scar line that once possessed? How can I give the harmony back to this city? This is the city of Bam in Kerman that destroyed almost completely in the earthquake about 12 years ago. It has harmony, it has perfect urban plan designing. How can I give back these kind of lovely colors back to my city and cityscapes? During World War II, many cities, especially from third world countries, became victims of rapid westernization in the Middle East. Tehran is one of them. A very famous architect who was famous because of gigantic shopping malls. He designed for buildings and cities in America, proposed the design for Tehran and called Tehran an ideal city to became an automobile society. But what we have nowadays in Tehran, you can see the city is very polluted. There's no harmony. There's no green public space in Tehran. What can I do for this monster like city as an artist? I am not president nor a mayor. I am artist. What can I do? How can I bring back color, joy and hope to this city? The city that now has no space for pedestrian and even not for cars. Here's my first mural for Tehran. I did 12 years ago this project. I brought the blue sky that were absent in the city. You can see the empty black wall is very ugly and depressing in the city. I decided to paint these green, beautiful public spaces that once animated every corner of Tehran. I decided to paint happy people looking over the city. And here is the picture from another angle and you can see how this mural interacts with people in the middle of Tehran. This is Van Aak Square, one of the most busiest squares in Tehran. And I was thinking, if I can make my city more beautiful, it can be less crime, less unhappy incidents near my walls. This is the detail of the mural. Here you can see another empty, ugly gray building. And this is my plan to give hope and energy to this city. I love these murals because these murals are talking about their interests because I'm originally from Tehran. So I lived in this city for many years and I'm using bus, I'm using public transportation. I know what's the problem in the city and what people are thinking about the city. This is the completed project. I tried to use blue skies as a therapy because of two reasons. First, the sky is beautiful also and there's no more blue sky in Tehran nowadays. And the second one, because of the psychological impact of blue color and people's nerve and people's life, because in a country under sanctions and after a couple of things like revolution, war, they have lots of problems in Tehran also because of mismanagement. So I decided to give more beauty to my city, Tehran. Here you can see another project of mine. I decided to beautify these buildings by using the elements from the architecture of these buildings to create harmony instead of creating something irrelevant to the city. Here's another view of the wall. While I was doing these projects, my statement was this, if I can take 10 seconds of everyone's life in Tehran and interrupt these people who they are thinking about their problems to not think about their problems and see something beautiful, I could save millions of millions of seconds of people's lives. It is the detail of that mural. And even now it's smaller than the real size of the mural. This one was the first one. I decided to do a mural on it and I was thinking that why my city is so ugly? This is my design. This is me on the project. And I decided to push back these walls and have more blue sky in my city as a personal subtle activism against mass construction in Tehran. In a city like Tehran that nowadays even it's worse because of lots of big skyscrapers in the west of Tehran is built and they are blocking the wind. So we have more polluted days in Tehran. Here's the detail of this mural. I tried to use elements from the city, the reflection of the mosque in the windows, some people to give more energy and more life to these kind of paintings. I painted more than 100 murals in Tehran with the help of my friends and my classmates. I designed all of them and one day I think it was 2010 after six years of painting these murals I felt exhausted because I did lots of projects and while I'm working on my mural projects and public art projects in Tehran I'm usually over thinking about problems and what I can do for a people and I'm always worried about the consequences of my image on people's mood. So it's quite challenging for me painting and working in the cityscape. I decided to come back to my studio and do my personal projects. My canvases are a little, I mean, completely different conceptually because they are my personal projects. I'm not worried about people. I don't worry about their mood but my projects and murals in Tehran were almost happy to work like a painkiller in Tehran. While I couldn't change the city completely I tried to give a painkiller pain to city instead of, I mean, do a permanent cure that it was not possible. While I was working on my project, while I was doing exhibitions in different countries I received a call from Boston. They asked me to paint a mural on this wall and this was very important project for the mayor of Boston also. This is the most important wall in Boston, right to the South Station in Boston and they asked artists from all over the world to do projects on this wall every year and they chose me for 2016. Despite the height of this wall that it's about 35 meters height it seems very teeny among these big skyscrapers that mushroomed around this wall during the past two decades. The shape of the dome on top of the building gave me this opportunity to think about our historical buildings all over the country in Iran, especially mosques and buildings from Yaz. Also I was thinking about Oculus in the Pantheon. I like how light and darkness playing in this architecture and also the light and dark in this building gave me this idea to think about dark side of politics between Iran and America. I was thinking about how can I give, how can I give hope to the world. In the same time there were a very refugee crisis everywhere in the Middle East also in the Europe. People who left their countries in the search of the spaces of hope in the search of future also in the America people were worried about their future. It was the right time that I was thinking about what can I do to give hope and peace to the city especially lots of immigrants were worried about their future their children future. Also because of Boston had very hard times during a Boston Marathon bombing I was thinking that Boston needs hail from this tragic memory. As a man from Middle East I wanted to grant them a gift. I wanted to tell them that not everyone from Middle East wants to harm you despite what media says about East and my country and despite political divide between Iran and America. I wanted to give them a present, a hope, a symbol of hope and while I was thinking about how can I manage to pack all my ideas in a single design I remembered the French movie the Red Balloon. This movie was about was talking about hope in European cities after World War II and I found the balloon the symbol of balloon very successful in this movie and it became my inspiration. I asked my family and friends to pose for me in a couple of photographs and one day as I was working in my studio I came to this idea this is me painting the mural the day that I painted this balloon people started to love this painting and I had lots of positive comments on my social media that people like this balloon and I was happy that I was successfully communicate with people through my art and give them hope. This is the main view of the wall. I just gave everyone one balloon as a symbol and here you can see how this mural interacts with people pedestrians and people in queues and these pictures sent by people directly to my social media and shows how people interact with this mural and they are connected with this mural lots of workers around downtown Boston having lunch every day next to this mural and I said people love this mural let me leave you with this comment that it was the biggest gift for me the comment was this my father has alzheimer's every time I walk by this I will be hopeful that the cure is found so we can eliminate this terrible disease it was my share to beautify my world and my city and let's think about how as how we as individuals can help to improve life quality and our planet thank you