Street art

Because of the dispersion of activities in big cities, employing highways as the most important connecting way is indispensable. In today world, highways are connection arteries of cities transporting people to their social activities. Because of continual use of highway, their walls prepare a context for conveying many Social, Cultural, Economic, etc concepts. That is why most economic promotions,communication of social concepts and cultural teachings are provided on highways walls and margins.In few recent years, given the same potential, highway walls has created a site for appearance of street art. Street art is demonstration of author’s personal signs on the walls and public places of the city and public audience decode the concepts embeded in the text of that art. Currently Tehran municipality, in a general policy, tried to spread and pay attention to street art particularly in the highways contexts. In this paper, we classify these designs on Tehran highway walls while indicating present examples and interpret the concepts lying in these designs from a semiotic view point.

City is the most complicated and tangible creature of man. There is a critical mutual communication between human and city; and the effect of one’ living environment is beyond question. Graffiti is a new urban phenomenon, which has drawn attention in light of its connection with protestation culture and street art. Thanks to symbolism of graffiti, the artists have added mysterious aspects to their work and distinguished themselves from formal culture. Social protestation is the most notable feature of the graffiti found in Iranian cities. However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no notable research work in Iran on the relationship of human, society, and existence from of graffiti symbolism viewpoint in particular. The present study is an attempt to survey and evaluate common symbols used on urban graffiti through documentary research. Technique and content analysis in stratified semiology based on Iranian-Islamic culture were taken into account.