More than 100 community members raised over $10,000 on GoFundMe for Mokhtar Paki, a Bay Area artist, to support the restoration of his central Berkeley mural, which was defaced in August.
The mural, Sinbad Voyage, depicts 400 immigrants — including some from the local community — aboard boats. Its vandalization caused supporters such as District 4 Councilmember Igor Tregub to denounce it as “hateful.”
Paki has already been working on restoring the painting and says he initially envisioned it would take only a few weeks to restore. However, since he began chipping the white paint off the mural, he realized how difficult it will be to restore, saying it took him almost two hours to recover a 1-inch-by-1-inch area.
“As a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, I see myself in this story as well, which made it even more heartbreaking to see it be vandalized,” Tregub said in an email. “But the resilience of our beloved community shines through, and I see it every day when I pass by volunteers painstakingly repairing the mural.”
Tregub donated $100 from his personal funds to Paki’s campaign, and hopes to source more funding with the city of Berkeley. Paki is also looking for support from Berkeley’s Civic Arts Commission.
Central Stage, a Richmond performing arts space run by Iranian artists, contributed $500 to the campaign.
“We have a long-term friendship and relationship with Mokhtar and his work, and he’s one of the prominent Iranian painters and artists that live in the Bay Area,” said Behzad Golemohammadi, a Central Stage board member.
Golemohammadi added that he has personally visited the mural to help Paki remove the white paint, and that it was important to him — as a member of the Iranian and immigrant communities — to see the work restored to its original form.
The whole process has been emotionally turbulent for Paki, who was abroad when a friend notified him of the painting’s defacement. He says this is his first time using a fundraising app like GoFundMe.
“Most of the support comes from really ordinary people, or some nonprofit organizations,” Paki said. “When they come to the wall, they really make me cry a few times a day.”
As Paki scrapes away the paint, he has discovered that some faces are recoverable and others are not. One of the larger faces, belonging to a Kurdish girl, was damaged, as well as the figure of Iranian singer, poet and television personality, Fereydoun Farrokhzad.
Paki says people passing by him as he works on the restoration have been very supportive, offering hugs and help with paint removal.
“I think this is (an) opportunity to defend the subject of this mural, to defend the people who are in the boat, in this voyage, and to defend the immigrants,” Paki said. “I was extremely appreciative (of) all the support of people who come there, or send me texts, send me emails, call me, support me financially or … come there to help, so it was really even better than creating the mural, in a way.”