When we signed our lease at 1501 Main St, Venice, the walls were blank. We knew they wouldn't stay that way for long — but we also knew that whoever painted them had to understand something deeper than aesthetics. They had to understand what it means to carry a culture across an ocean.
Who Is Parisa Parnian?
Parisa Parnian is a Los Angeles-based, Iranian-American multi-disciplinary visual artist, muralist, and experiential curator. Known as the Savage Muse, she has built a career that refuses to be contained: fashion design in New York, underground performance pieces exploring Iranian identity post-9/11, a gender-fluid streetwear label in San Francisco, design at California College of the Arts, six years at Guess? as a senior designer, and then Savage Muse — the multidisciplinary design studio she founded in 2016 in Los Angeles. She doesn't just make art. She builds entire environments.
Two Walls, Two Visions
Rahi gave Parisa one instruction: 'These two walls are yours.' And two requests. The first: the phrase 'Woman, Life, Freedom' had to appear somewhere — the words that became a global rallying cry after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. The second: a visual bridge between the Caspian Sea and Venice Beach. Parisa answered with two murals, each rising nearly 12 feet, that together form a complete cultural tapestry.
The First Mural: Memory
A Persian sofreh anchors the first wall — a picnic spread of cheese, fruit, bread, mint, and tea brewed from a samovar. A surfboard stands upright beside it, its surface covered in a swirling paisley pattern. (Paisley, as Rahi points out, is derived from Persian design.) The 'Woman, Life, Freedom' text appears here — not as a political statement alone, but as a wish woven into the fabric of a remembered picnic by the Caspian Sea.
The Second Mural: Reinvention
The second wall features the 'Lös Ángeles' typography — Persian and English scripts blended, a heart replacing the 'O', brushstrokes of deep magenta, burnt orange, and crimson. At its center: a Peykan, the iconic Iranian sedan, reimagined in turquoise, coral pink, mustard, and teal. A woman in monochrome leans against it, a man beside her — ordinary figures from an Iran that existed before 1979, dropped into the visual language of LA pop art.
Why These Murals Matter
Parisa said it herself: 'Iran only seems to appear in the headlines during a crisis. But Iranian culture is far bigger than politics. It's poetry, music, food, sensuality, humor, and design. A civilization thousands of years old.' The murals at Caspian Coast are our permanent answer to that. They're not a news cycle. They're memory, identity, and beauty — on a wall in Venice, California, every day.
Come see the murals in person. 1501 Main St, Unit 103, Venice, CA. And visit Parisa's work at parisaparnian.com.
