The corner of Lexington Avenue and 24th Street in Manhattan has become a prime location for raising awareness about Iran’s human rights crisis.

Painted by Italian street artist Jacopo Ceccarelli, also known as “2501”, an impressive four-story mural depicts birds breaking free from a cage, symbolizing the many journalists, writers and artists who are held behind bars in Iran for expressing themselves freely.

“It’s a really simple idea,” Ceccarelli explains. “It started from the idea of jail, of being incarcerated. The first sketch was of birds coming out of a kind of a prism cage. But when I started painting the mural, the idea got more abstract. Now you have a sensation of birds, more than actual birds. But the whole idea is the same: the idea of movement and freedom.”

The Italian artist began doing graffiti at the age of 14. He later moved to Brazil to study the South American approach to street art, which is where he developed his artistic style – depicting nature through the abstract, just like his mural on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 24th Street.

The artwork, which he named “Halfway Out” is a part of the #NotACrime campaign – New York City’s most ambitious mural art project to date – which aims at prompting conversations about human rights violations in Iran.

“It was natural for me to join the cause of promoting freedom of expression,” Ceccarelli says. “Many of my friends have been incarcerated in Italy for being activists, some for months, some for years. So my life has been touched by the situation.”

Ceccarelli identifies himself more as an activist than an artist; for him the idea of an artist is outdated.

“I don’t really like how artists are considered to be someone who is special,” he says. “I think everyone, in reality, is creative, and in a certain way we are all artists. It’s just that we are not trained to be artists, or we were never in the right situation to be free to express ourselves; time-wise, money-wise, or culture-wise.”

#NotACrime Global Street Art: 2501 in Manhattan from Journalism is not a crime on Vimeo.

The #NotACrime global street art campaign teamed up with curators and street artists in New York City to produce murals that raise awareness of Iran’s human rights crisis.

The Iranian government continues to violate the rights of its own citizens. The #NotACrime initiative looks at two issues in particular: the plight of Iran’s journalists, who face arbitrary arrest and intimidation, and the government’s refusal to allow the Baha’i religious minority pursue further education. Read more on notacrime.me.

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#NotACrime: Exiled Artist Paints for Free Expression in Iran