We are enjoying the work of New York-based artist Kymia Nawabi this morning. Nawabi is a first-generation Iranian-American artist who describes her work as "an allegory of human behavior" and weaves a fantastical personal mythology together with "adopted gods, mythological creatures and burial ceremonies from different cultures."

We love these murals by Iranian street artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo. They are fun, playful, bright, and the perspective, depth, and imagination are fantastic! Mehdi has painted over 100 murals in the Iranian capital of Tehran. He studied at Tarbiat Modares University and is the owner and designer of his mural painting company Blue Sky Painters Company.

We are enjoying the paintings Iranian-American artist Tala Madani. Her portraits of Middle Eastern men are provocative and humorous commentaries on cultural and sexual identity. The scenes in her work "play out fictive rituals of a deviant, distinctly female imagination: prayer gatherings twisted into homosexual orgies, birthday parties targeted for terrorist attack, and tattoos and body hair plucking construed as the latest in ultra-macho beauty makeovers."

Anyone can declare that life is beautiful on a gallery wall, but how about saying that Life Is Beautiul using hundreds of knives? We haven't really ever heard of Knife Typography before, so perhaps we can assume that the 2009 Farhad Moshiri installation is the world's first.

Shirin Fakhim is a 38-year-old self-taught artist living and working in Tehran, Iran. Her found-object sculptures of Tehran streetwalkers are explicit and provocative, made up of traditional terra cotta pots of various shapes and sizes, decorated with fabrics, wigs, and different accessories bought in public markets and bazaars on the streets of Tehran.