Icy and Sot – Let her be free

The Moco Museum’s strong beating heart is in street art. What better to combine with Banksy than with the artists also known as the Banksy of Iran: Icy and Sot. Although they are comparable, the boys only discovered Banksy long after they started making their own art. When they were skateboarding around the city of Tabriz in Iran, they carried their own stickers and stencils. They put the stencils up illegally in alleys and public parks. It was their way of transforming their surroundings into a home and the only way they could express themselves freely. The boys didn’t know that what they were doing was called street art and only after they bypassed the firewall of Iran’s internet did they discover the work of street artists like Banksy and Blek le rat. Icy and Sot and Banksy can be called activist artists, just like Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, because they also address big social and political themes. In the work of both Banksy and Icy and Sot, you will find themes such as anti-censorship, anti-capitalism and anti-war.