An underground train carriage offers an unusual kind of intimacy: strangers sitting shoulder to shoulder in silence, suspended between departure and arrival beneath a ceiling of cold artificial light. In I Came by Metro, a 2026 mixed media canvas measuring 120 × 100 cm, the Isfahan-based painter Nafiseh Mehmandoust turns this routine journey into an unsettling pictorial study. The work belongs to her series Illusion.
Mehmandoust’s encounter with the subject is direct and habitual. As she explains: “I use the metro for my daily journeys, and over time, its interior has become a source of fascination for me.” Rather than depicting transit as a blur of velocity, the painting anchors the viewer inside the receding enclosure of the train. “I am drawn to the way different people share the same space, sometimes seemingly unaware of where they are or where they are going. The seemingly endless sequence of carriages evokes the repetitive flow of life.”
Nafiseh Mehmandoust, I Came by Metro, 2026. Mixed media on canvas, 120 × 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
The composition is structured around this relentless perspective. The carriages extend in linear repetition, framing passengers caught in neutral, detached postures. Above them, however, the domestic normalcy of the subway car breaks down into acute visual dissonance. To illuminate the scene, Mehmandoust draws directly upon modern art history: “I borrowed the ceiling lights from Picasso’s Guernica, transforming them into symbols of artificial light and deception.”
In Guernica, Picasso’s jagged, bare bulb hung over a scene of catastrophe, radiating a harsh, electric glare that exposed every contortion below. Mehmandoust adapts this iconic form into the ceiling fixtures of the subway car. Overhead, the lights become an artificial glow over the carriage. Where commuters would expect advertisements, she introduces another disruption: “The advertisements in the metro became butcher’s hooks”. The hooks replace the familiar posters and give an ominous physical edge to an otherwise ordinary shared space.
Born in 1979, Mehmandoust originally earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Electronics from Najafabad University before dedicating herself to fine art, eventually completing a master’s degree in Painting at Sepahr University in Isfahan in 2023.
“My process begins with numerous sketches on paper, which I transfer to canvas. I then work through extensive revisions until the painting reaches its final form. I usually apply an acrylic underlayer before developing the painting with oil colours.”
Among the other recent paintings she sent are Weightlifter (2024), hello (2025), Expelled (2025) and Feast in Paradise (2026). Her exhibition history begins with a solo exhibition at Khorasgan University in Isfahan in 2002 and a student group exhibition at Islamic Azad University in Najafabad in 2003; more recently her work has been shown in group exhibitions in Iran, including Karim Khan Zand Gallery in Tehran (2022), Sepahr University (2023), Eknoon Gallery in Isfahan (2023) and Chida Private Space in Isfahan (2025).
Nafiseh Mehmandoust, Expelled, 2025. Mixed media on canvas, 123 × 160 cm. Courtesy of the artist.Nafiseh Mehmandoust, Weightlifter, 2024. Mixed media on canvas, 145 × 165 cm. Courtesy of the artist.Nafiseh Mehmandoust, hello, 2025. Mixed media on canvas, 67 × 67 cm. Courtesy of the artist.Nafiseh Mehmandoust, Feast in Paradise, 2026. Mixed media on canvas, 150 × 150 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
In I Came by Metro, Mehmandoust refrains from illustrative melodrama. By linking the visual memory of Guernica to the mundane architecture of daily commuting, she reveals how the spaces we inhabit unthinkingly can hold an enduring pictorial weight.
