Artist Review and Q&A: Mahrokh Mofid Nakhaei

With just days left to see her work at Grundy Art Gallery, Manchester-based Iranian painter Mahrokh Mofid Nakhaei discusses memory, uncertainty and the quiet emotional charge of everyday objects as part of the Apollo Painting School exhibition.

This week is the last chance to see the Apollo Painting School exhibition at Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, before it closes on 28 June. Presented alongside Louise Giovanelli’s exhibition From Here to Here to Here, the show brings together artists from the 2024 and 2025 cohorts of the independent painting programme founded by gallerist Alice Amati, artist Louise Giovanelli and academic Dr Ian Hartshorne.

Operating between Manchester and Latina in Italy, the Apollo Painting School offers an alternative model of learning for emerging painters, placing emphasis on studio practice, mentorship and exchange outside the usual London-centred art world. The exhibition reflects that breadth of approach, moving between abstraction and figuration, personal memory and formal experimentation, while offering a snapshot of some of the most compelling emerging painters currently working in the UK.

Among the paintings are two oils from Iranian-born Manchester-based Mahrokh Mofid Nakhaei, whose singular language emerges through familiar objects – a cardboard box, a handful of crumpled papers, a cluster of balloons. They aren’t dramatic, yet both paintings generate a sense of unease, as though something has already taken place or is about to happen.

In Still Inside, No. 26, an open box sits beneath bands of coloured light. Red, blue and yellow hues move across the surface of the cardboard and onto the surrounding space, transforming an otherwise ordinary scene. Inside the box are several sheets of apparently blank crumpled paper. Whatever information the box contains is inaccessible to the viewer.

The painting is strongest where it resists explanation. An open box usually implies disclosure, but here opening something only seems to create further uncertainty. The papers feel less like rubbish than evidence abandoned attempts and unfinished thoughts.

The coloured light introduces another layer. Mofid Nakhaei has spoken about memories of Iranian interiors and the coloured glass of orosi windows, but the reference isn’t fully-formed. The light functions more like an atmosphere than a direct nod to Mofid Nakhaei’s homeland. It changes the emotion of the painting without dictating how it should be read.

A similar tension runs through Forth Drift. At its centre is a small arrangement of blue balloons gathered around a fragile support. The balloons could hold associations of celebration, childhood and release but rather than floating, they seem weighed down. A dark line running across the lower part of the painting draws the eye back down. The effect is subtle but persistent. What should feel buoyant instead feels heavy.

There is a temptation to search these paintings for a hidden narrative, but they are more interesting when approached as states of mind. Neither work offers a neat narrative, instead lingering in hesitation and unfulfilled potential. The open box refuses to reveal its contents, the balloons never quite lift off – both paintings seem caught between possibility and postponement.

What is striking is how much human presence exists within scenes where people are absent. The papers have been handled. The balloons have been inflated and tied. Someone has handled the objects hopefully and then disappeared. The paintings occupy the space left behind.

For an artist living away from her homeland when it faces such turbulence, questions of memory and distance inevitably hover in the background, though Mofid Nakhaei avoids turning them into declarations. Any political charge emerges indirectly, through feelings of uncertainty, waiting and suspended expectation rather than through explicit imagery. The result is work that remains open without being vague.

Mofid Nakhaei’s works don’t overstate their intentions – they are modest in scale and restrained in mood, yet their emotional weight linger in the mind.

Q&A: Mahrokh Mofid Nakhaei

Your paintings often feel psychologically charged without showing any people. How do you create a sense of human presence through objects alone?

I think this sense of human presence comes from how the space is arranged, and from the actions that objects carry inside them. I often work with interior spaces, and an interior is already a space shaped by human life, even when nobody is visible.

I do not see this as a complete removal of the human figure from my practice. In some paintings, a figure may still appear. But in these recent works, I have been more interested in what remains when the figure is not shown directly.

For example, I do not need to show the person blowing up a balloon, holding it, opening a box, or crumpling a paper. For me, the object can already suggest that action.

So the human figure is absent in these works, but the result of human action is still there. I am interested in this moment after something has happened, when the object remains and the person is no longer visible. This can make the space feel quiet, but also psychologically charged.

The coloured light in Still Inside recalls Iranian interiors and Orosi windows. As an Iranian artist working in Britain, how do memories of Iran continue to shape your work, and do you ever feel pressure for those references to be read politically?

Of course, memories of Iran continue to shape my work. I think it is natural that they enter the paintings in some way, because they are part of my lived experience. But they do not always appear through clear symbols or direct images. They often come through light, colour, interiors, and the feeling of a space.

The coloured light in Still Inside, No. 26 has a connection to Orosi windows and Iranian interiors, but it is also connected to a feeling. When coloured light falls inside a room, it gives me a particular emotional response. It can feel warm, hopeful, and slightly fragile.

I understand that references to Iran can be read politically, and yes, there is also a political layer in the work. My memories of Iran are not separate from politics, especially because the idea of home, distance, hope and uncertainty can all become political when you are living away from your country.

But I do not want the painting to work as a direct political statement. The political feeling is there, but it comes through atmosphere, light, objects and uncertainty rather than through a clear symbol or message.

These works are being shown in Blackpool, a place often associated with spectacle and entertainment – until recently alongside a Monet and local school children’s artwork. How did the setting influence what works you selected to display?

To be honest, the setting did not directly influence my selection in a planned way. I had not visited Grundy before, and at the time the works were selected I was not fully aware of all the other parts of the programme, including the schoolchildren’s work.

But it felt very special to have two of my paintings shown at Grundy in this wider context. The gallery was also presenting Monet’s work, Louise Giovanelli’s exhibition, and the Apollo Painting School presentation. For me, it was an honour to have my work included in that situation.

Tell us about being part of Apollo Painting School and how it’s influenced your work.

Being part of Apollo Painting School has been very important for me. I would not say that it changed the subject of my work, but it made me much more aware of painting itself.

It helped me think more carefully about how an image becomes a painting: how to build a strong image through colour, surface, light, composition and the physical language of paint. It made me pay more attention to the decisions inside the painting, not only the idea behind it.

I became more aware of how to make a painting that works as a painting, not only as an image or a subject. I am very grateful to Alice Amati, Louise Giovanelli and Dr Ian Hartshorne for giving me this opportunity, and for creating a serious and supportive space around painting.

Your paintings are built slowly through layers of glazing. Do you think that slowness is simply a technique, or is it connected to the themes that run through your work?

I really enjoy working with glazing because I like seeing what layers of colour can do to a subject. A thin layer can change the mood of an object, make one part stronger, soften another part, or hide something underneath.

There is also a lot of waiting in this process. I have to wait for one layer to dry before I can add the next one, and that waiting becomes part of how I think through the painting. The image appears slowly, and sometimes I understand what it needs only after spending time with it.

But not every part of my paintings is made through glazing. Sometimes I suddenly use thicker paint to cover an area completely, so the layers underneath disappear. I like this movement between building something slowly and then interrupting it. Some parts are revealed, and some parts are covered again.

Looking at these two paintings together, they both seem to deal with things that are hidden, delayed, or unresolved. Is there a larger question that connects them for you?

That’s a really good question. Looking at these two paintings together, I think they are connected by a question about what happens to hope when it has to wait for too long, or when it has to stay partly hidden.

Can hope stay alive when it has to wait for too long, or does it slowly become tired?

In Still Inside, No. 26, the box is open, but it still does not fully reveal what it holds. There is light, but there is also uncertainty. In Forth Drift, the balloons suggest celebration, but they feel heavy and unable to rise.

The hope is still there, but it is not light anymore. It has become heavier, quieter, and more tired.