Explore Iraqi-Minnesotan portrayals of home through images, stories, and artifacts. Photographers Ahmed Alshaikhli and Jaafar Alnabi capture the personalities and passions of Iraqi-Minnesotans and offer an authentic glimpse into their lives. Interview highlights alongside portrait photos illuminate stories from a diverse range of Iraq’s regions, ethnicities, and religions. Together, Alnabi and Alshaikhli examine what home was, is, and can be.

Home of Memories is a traveling exhibition curated by CarryOn Homes (Peng Wu, Shun Jie Yong, Zoe Cinel), and produced as part of Iraqi Voices, a collaborative arts storytelling lab run by Minneapolis nonprofit The Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project. 

Jaafar Alnabi is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on filmmaking and visual effects. He is a 2016 graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design filmmaking BFA program. He moved to Minnesota in 1996 and is now based in New York City, working between NYC and Minneapolis. 

Ahmed Alshaikhli is a seasoned photojournalist, working at prominent Iraqi and international television broadcasters and with the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in Iraq. He moved to the U.S. in 2014 and settled in Minnesota with his family in 2016. 

Photo Credit: Jaafar Alnabi, “Hazha Las, Erbil - Woodbury,” digital print, 2020, 24”x30”