Across Lashai’s work, nature serves as a portal to contemplate the psychic world and the unknown, both personally and collectively, often registering the effects of History including war, revolution, and political uncertainty in Iran and across the globe. As Lashai described herself, “The essential being of nature: freshness, beauty, the endless life and death, this wondrous cycle of the breathing earth and time (zāmin vā zaman), this tumult and at times stillness of nature motivates me to work.” Nature, for Lashai, is a starting point, it is the poetry that surrounds us, and the catalyzing force behind her work as an artist. The exhibition includes a series of abstract paintings of the Darbandsar Mountains in northern Tehran, Iran, reflecting the artist’s engagement with aesthetic abstraction, formal technique, and the relationship between images and poetry, a landscape beloved to the artist and her family. Described in detail in her autobiographical novel Shâl Bâmo (The Jackal Came), the mountains and the Caspian Sea were central to Lashai's life, influencing her deeply. Painted during the turbulent decade following the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, her works convey a sense of upheaval and resilience. The mountains in her paintings are textured and layered with colors, symbolizing the tumultuous emotions of fear and bloodshed. These pieces serve as witnesses to history, reflecting the complexities of nature and human experience.

Farideh Lashai, born on the lush Caspian Sea coast, was deeply influenced by this landscape throughout her life. In Tehran, where her family moved in 1950, she began painting as a child, earning her the nickname "nakhash basi," or painter. She studied literature in Germany, where she was captivated by Bertolt Brecht's epic theater. Farideh also trained in crystal design and carving in Austria, exhibiting her crystal works in Milan. Alongside her art, she translated Brecht's works into Farsi and published her own poems. She held her first solo show in Tehran in 1973, focusing on nature. Despite personal challenges, including arrest and divorce, she remained dedicated to her art, participating in exhibitions in Iran and abroad. In her later years, she explored the moving image and surrealism, creating dynamic works that reflected her love for Mossadegh and her introspective memoir, "Shal Bamu (The Jackal Game)." In 2004, she participated in an exhibition called ‘The Gardens of Iran’ at The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. She passed away from cancer at 68, deeply immersed in surrealism, as seen in her readings about Luis Bunuel's "My Last Sigh."