Berkeley Speaks recently interviewed Mr. Mokhtar Paki, Iranian-born Berkeley resident who creates beautiful public art with a positive message.
Q. Mokhtar, you have created a beautiful and soulful piece of public art in Berkeley, a celebration of the struggles of refugees around the world. Why did you want to paint this mural for the people of Berkeley?
www.mokhtapraki.com
A. I live in Berkeley; it is my love letter to the City of Berkeley and its people. But I also wanted to address something that really inspired me and engaged me in the last ten years, and that was the plight of immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, toward the Mediterranean Sea and wanting to move into Europe. Many of them, unfortunately, perished. Between 2014 and 2022, about 29,000 people have been drowned, just to try to get to Europe. And that was enough for me to feel the apocalyptic scale of the movement, and why all these people come there.
Personally, as an immigrant I related so much to that. To add to that, the policy of Donald Trump in the United States and the border of Mexico also added to the situation and to my concern, the last six or seven years. These two together, on both sides of the world, actually became the inspiration for my mural on the wall of Berkeley.
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Q. What is your personal experience as an immigrant to this country?
A. I think I had both good and not so fortunate experiences like everybody else. The good part is, I like Berkeley and the rest of the Bay Area where I live. There is a community of nations that are here, and I communicate with them. I’ve been working, I’ve been studying here, I’ve been teaching, I’ve been producing art, so all of them are good experiences.
The other experience is just witnessing and sometimes even going through some of the barriers, especially from some right-wing sections of the country, for immigrants. So that one can be directly or indirectly felt. I don’t want to go through that in detail, but I think every immigrant has seen that. First of all, you are not in your own homeland country, you are in some second country. The barriers can be several, they can be language, there can be lots of xenophobia sometimes, lots of other things.
I’ve been educated; I feel myself privileged compared to many of the immigrants who come here and they don’t have the ability to read or write, or to speak English. I don’t really complain as a person, but I think I relate, and I have sympathy for others who don’t have that education and the privilege that a person like me may have.
Q. The issue of refugees and immigration in general is by definition a global one. How do you see the experience of refugees coming to the United States as different from other countries that you have lived in?
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A. I was very surprised especially in this last decade to see such a strong movement from the right-wing section of the government toward immigrants, especially from Mexico and Latin America, to hear policies of curbing the immigrants, policy against immigrants, returning them back, separation of children from their families. I didn’t see some policy like this [when I lived in Europe], especially the separation of children from their parents. It hasn’t happened in Europe at least not these last ten years, at least I have no knowledge of that if it has. Europe has its own share of xenophobia. But recently, compared to here, I think it’s a little different.
For example: The US has caused a flood of refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq. But the number of Afghan refugees in the United States compared to those in Germany, and Europe, is so insignificant. It’s very ironic that we [the U.S.] created that situation, and we don’t really want them to come here.
What I can see is that the north side of the world, including Europe and the United States, Canada, and Japan, have created a disaster, a human disaster, and added onto it an environmental disaster. We have a flood, a Biblical movement from the south, from Africa, from parts of Asia, from parts of Latin America coming to the north. It’s really not different between the United States and Europe. Colonialism started, brutalized and looted all these countries and now we have this situation. Xenophobia has been raised these last 20 years. Many of the right-wing governments that are in power right now, like in Poland, or in Hungary, or Italy, are partly in response to the movement of so many refugees. And we have this Trumpism also.
I don’t know what is going to be the solution for this, but I think, I can actually see, and I can witness it, and I can express what is going on. I am not a politician, I am an artist; what I see is the rise in xenophobia against them, and as a result they become scapegoats for any problem in any country.
Q. Going back to where your roots are, is it your experience that in the regions of the Middle East and North Africa, at least some of them have a more organic relationship between the visitors and the citizens of some of those countries? How historically, people have been able to just come and have it not become an issue?
A. The comparison is going to be relative. It’s based on the resources that you have, based on the conditions. I’ll just give you an example: Lebanon accepts the most refugees in the world compared to its population. Turkey is the second. Just being there, being in the middle of these three continents, makes Turkey so open to the refugees from Syria, from Iran, from Iraq, from all around. Iran, my country, had about three to four million Afghan refugees. . . .
So we are not just talking about Europe and the United States being “occupied” and “attacked” and “invaded” by them. The whole world is into it. . . .
For another example, Mexico is accepting so many in, because they are in between the U.S. and the rest of Latin America . . .
What I’m saying is, when the whole world is suffering, we cannot exclude this or that country. We have to share, do whatever we can do.
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I personally don’t believe in borders. I have been a member of the San Francisco Poster Syndicate. Part of our activity was to create posters, with the slogan of “No Borders No Walls.” I think the future, hopefully, is going to be to get rid of borders. And the requirement for that is going to be to help other countries to be at the same level of prosperity.
It takes a long, long time.
It sounds very idealistic, very optimistic, but that is why we are here.
Q. Why is public art important to the spirit of this city? Can it actually change the consciousness of the residents and visitors of Berkeley?
A. I am so happy you asked about that. We were just talking about politics and this and that. Now we are talking about art. I personally think that art is going to change minds and hearts any ways, no matter how you do it. If it is real art, there is always going to be some kind of reaction, some sort of inspiration.
I believe that I cannot be an abstract artist. I like abstract art and I admire abstract artists, but I personally think there are so many issues in my mind that they lead me toward saying something that concerns people around me, concerns the world, concerns the environment.
Art right now is inseparable from my conscience. I don’t really decide about that. It just happens. When I wanted to create some art for the city of Berkeley, a few things came to my mind. One of them was about was about children; and the future of us, and the environment; and there was the homeless situation. The other one was about this.
I realized that In Berkeley, with all the history of Berkeley, and being very liberal and progressive, there hasn’t been one mural about immigration, that I know of. There have been about the other two, about homelessness and about children and the environment, but not about immigration. The fact that it didn’t exist made it very urgent for me. I think it is going to affect people. People passing by, they look at the art, and get some feeling, some emotion, and hopefully they think about it.
During the process of making this art, for three or four months, I interacted with the people of Berkeley. That one was the huge reward for me. It was like a prize, the best thing that happened. The interaction and responses were so supportive. Because they see themselves in it. Many of them are immigrants. Some of the characters in it, they are from the same streets. The kids, they are immigrants.
The images of this mural contain over 400 figures. About 100 of them, you can see their faces, and they are actual people. They are actual immigrants from around the world, some dead, some living. For example you have a Russian musician who is living here, you have people from Poland, you have Jewish, Armenian, Muslims from every place, you have a group of LGBTQ people from around the Bay Area, who live around here. So they are all there. People of different faiths, different races, and also because of social class.
One of the most important figures is my own niece. Her name is Sanaz. She was five years old. Her father and she tried to escape Iran through the Persian Gulf. There were about 14 people altogether. It was a capsized boat. All of them drowned except my brother, and I think maybe another person. Sanaz died when she was only five years old, was drowned. So her face is on this mural. My own face is also in the mural. And many, many other people.
Jacqueline from Guatemala was seven years old. She died in custody on the border of Mexico and the US. It was during the period of family separation, of children from the parents, where she got sick and she died. There are many different examples. If you see them, you can see they are all authentic, they are real people. There was another one, I think his name was Carlos; he also was from Guatemala. He was 16 years old. He got sick, ICE [U.S. immigration] did not take care of him, and after four or five days, he also died. These cases that I mention are very famous.
And also in the Middle East you have Kurdish, for example, Armenians, and many other minorities, you have Yazidis, Kurds, who have been slaughtered by ISIS up there in Syria, in Iraq, both. The Kurdish group are the biggest group in the Middle East who don’t have their own country.
So we have them everywhere.
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One thing I want to say at the end of this interview is how amazed I was when I realized how little the budget for art, and community art, was in this country. I came from Scandinavia. There really are vast resources for public art there. Here, there are not even drawing classes in many of the schools. Did you know that?
So if they ask you, what are you doing, and you say “I am an artist,” they say “no, what are you doing!” How do you make money?
The positive point of this is, I like Berkeley. I like the open streets, the progressive people, relatively I mean. Another thing is still their old-fashioned way. I’m talking about people who fight for their ideals. They are still idealistic. I mean not everybody, but relatively. One of the last places in California; I feel comfortable here.
Q. Where can people see more of your work? What projects are next for you?
A. I am working on a full description with descriptions of all the faces in the mural, their names and ages. I am also working on a graphic novel!
Another website for my images is at: www.mokhtarimage.com
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To read the full text of the Berkeley Speaks interview, visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZKxfTIgvXKcA1JXl0Ti4_4NeVxEZO5Wr/edit