Minneapolis, MN
National cigarettes, banned pop songs and memory oceans: Minneapolis Iranian artists show work about diaspora
In the underground gallery of the Q.arma Building in northeast Minneapolis, there is a line of giant stubbed-out cigarettes, all of them glossy and hard ceramic.
Nearby are watercolor prints of Persian calligraphy featuring lyrics by female Iranian pop artists who worked in exile after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In a back room, artist Shirin Ghoraishi places a virtual reality headset on visitors, chaperoning them through an ocean horizon that leads to a subway car.
This is the show, “So Far, So Close,” featuring Ghoraishi, Ziba Rajabi and Katayoun Amjadi. The artists were all born in Iran.
Artist Shirin Ghoraishi, here with curator and artist Ziba Rajabi, guides guests through her VR experience inspired by dreams and memory. Courtesy of Drew Arrieta
“We all have been living outside of Iran for years,” says Rajabi, who also curated the show. “This is an exhibition that explores the complicated experience of displacement from the motherland through themes of space, distance and memory by three Iranian female artists.”
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The exhibition was funded by the Twin Cities Iranian Culture Collective and the Minnesota Humanities Center.
Rajabi’s works are the series of watercolor calligraphy. In her artist statement, Rajabi explains that in “the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Islamic regime banned pop music, and the only art and music allowed were war propaganda.”
The pop songs she references in her work come from Iranian artists whose work was smuggled into the country on tapes or VHS. For this show, she focuses on the music of Leila Forouhar, an Iranian woman who fled Iran in the 80s.
The “Forget to Fly” series by artist-curator Ziba Rajabi uses watercolor monotypes of Persian calligraphy “employing verses from pop songs by Iranian female singers who lived and worked in exile after the 1979 [Iranian] Revolution.”
Courtesy of Drew Arrieta
“Her experience of exile was similar,” Rajabi says.
Ghoraishi created a VR experience about reality, dreams and memory and where these areas overlap.
“The audience will see an ocean that is a representation of dreams and memories, which doesn’t mean they are true or not true,” Ghoraishi says. “Sometimes memory tricks us. We remember something that didn’t exist before.”
Ghoraishi ends the user experience by placing them in front of a full-length mirror in a dim room.
“This final moment is a necessary reminder that as an immigrant, we are shaped by what we remember of our past and what we have had to forget,” Ghoraishi says. “The mirror reflects not only the self but the constant negotiation of one’s identity.”
A still from the virtual reality experience “Echoes and Fragments” created by Minneapolis artist Shirin Ghoraishi.
Courtesy of Shirin Ghoraishi
Amjadi created the nine giant ceramic cigarettes. The rest of her installation includes silkscreen prints of cigarette packs as well as two actual cigarette packs encased in a clear box. “Two ordinary cigarette packs picked up from newsstands in Tehran and Jerusalem,” Amjadi wrote in her artist statement.
The brands are Bahman, the national cigarette of Iran, and Alia, a cigarette brand from Palestine that is sold in Israel.
Amjadi says her art investigates “how objects carry memory, and the objects that we collect, especially as souvenirs that we bring from one place to another, are signifiers of memory, nostalgia and also identity are embedded in them.”
Bahman, Amjadi explains, is Farsi for “snow avalanche” and is also the word for February, the month of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
“Bahman is the month of revolution, a 1979 revolution in Iran that, in a sense, caused the Iranian diaspora,” Amjadi says. “So me and my friends right here would not be here if that event would not have taken place.”
Minneapolis-based Iranian artists Katayoun Amjadi, Shirin Ghoraishi and Ziba Rajabi with moderator Aida Shahghasemi at the opening of the show “So Far So Close” at the Q.arma Underground Gallery in northeast Minneapolis.
Courtesy of Alaleh Naderi
Alia is the Arabic word for “exalted.” Amjadi says it also has the meaning of a return to the Holy Land for the Jewish people. (Aliyah means “ascent” in Hebrew and is used in Judaism to represent both the act of being called to read from the Hebrew Bible and the act of immigrating to Israel.)
“Which is a reverse diaspora but causes another diaspora, a Palestinian diaspora,” she says. “I’m interested in the desires and yearnings of one population for a homeland, for belonging to a place, and how it causes another group to be displaced, and the parities between these diasporas in a way.”
Gallery hours are 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays through Tuesdays. Visitors can do the virtual reality experience Saturdays and Sundays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibition will have a closing reception on Sept. 21.
Minneapolis, MN
Minnesota weather: Gorgeous Sunday with a warmer Monday ahead
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – A sunny and warm Sunday is in store for the Twin Cities, with even higher temperatures expected on Monday before a chance of rain and cooler air returns later in the week.
Sunday forecast
Local perspective:
Sunday is starting with some cloud cover before sunshine moves in with highs near 70 degrees around the metro and southern parts of the state.
Winds will be much lighter than Saturday, coming from the south at 5 to 10 mph with only occasional gusts up to 15 mph.
The Brainerd Lakes area will see temperatures in the 60s, while the North Shore will be cooler, which is typical for this time of year.
Sunday’s weather is expected to be dry and pleasant.
Overnight, temperatures will drop to the upper 30s and lower 40s, with some clouds moving in ahead of Monday.
Extended forecast
What’s next:
Monday could be the warmest day of the week, with highs in the lower 70s for the Twin Cities and some spots in southern Minnesota possibly reaching close to 80 degrees.
Winds will shift from southerly to southeasterly and then easterly as the day goes on, but should remain light.
After the warm start to the week, a cold front will move through on Tuesday, bringing a chance for a few rain showers in the early morning.
Temperatures will likely drop to the upper 40s by Wednesday and Thursday, with another front possibly bringing showers late Friday into early Saturday.
The rest of the extended forecast calls for temperatures close to or just below average, with highs in the upper 40s to lower 50s.
The Source: This story uses information from the FOX 9 weather forecast.
Minneapolis, MN
Man found dead in south Minneapolis house fire
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – Firefighters are investigating the Minneapolis’s second fire fatality of the year after a man died in a house fire Saturday afternoon.
Fatal fire on 28th Avenue South
What we know:
According to the Minneapolis Fire Department (MFD), fire crews arrived shortly after 1:00 p.m. and found smoke coming from the second floor of a single-family home on 28th Avenue South. Bystanders alerted firefighters that someone might be trapped inside.
Crews had to work through heavy debris to reach the upstairs area. It took about 40 minutes to fully put out the fire.
During the primary search, firefighters found a man in his 60s dead on the second floor. No one else was found after searching all the floors.
Minneapolis Animal Care and Control took in a dog found outside the home.
Assistant Chief Wes Van Vickle said, “The department is grateful to the neighbors who alerted fire crews that someone may still have been inside, allowing them to act quickly.”
Fire safety reminders and community response
What they’re saying:
“This afternoon’s tragic loss of life weighs heavily on all of us, and we extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the deceased,” said Van Vickle.
He also encourages the public to regularly check and maintain smoke detectors and fire extinguishers at home.
There were no other injuries reported. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner is working to confirm the man’s identity.
What we don’t know:
The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, and the man’s name has not been released.
Minneapolis, MN
Minnesota serves as the flagship for nationwide ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Organizers of Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies across the country are predicting that the protests against the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration could add up to one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history, with Minnesota taking center stage.
Organizers say more than 3,100 events have been registered in all 50 states, with more than 9 million people expected to participate.
And they’ve designated the rally at the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul as the national flagship event, in recognition of how the state where federal agents fatally shot two people who were monitoring Trump’s immigration crackdown became an epicenter of resistance.
Headlining that observance will be Bruce Springsteen, performing “Streets of Minneapolis,” which he wrote in response to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and in tribute to the thousands of Minnesotans who took to the streets over the winter. Springsteen’s Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour, which has a “No Kings” theme, kicks off Tuesday in Minneapolis.
Minnesota organizers have told state officials they expect 100,000 people could converge on the Capitol grounds, where last June’s event drew an estimated 80,000 people.
The St. Paul rally will also feature singer Joan Baez, actor Jane Fonda,Sen. Bernie Sanders and a long list of other activists, labor leaders and elected officials.
The White House dismissed the nationwide protests as the product of “leftist funding networks” with little real public support.
“The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Rallies are also planned in more than a dozen other countries, from Europe to Latin America to Australia, Ezra Levin, a co-executive director of Indivisible, a group spearheading the events, said in an interview. Countries with constitutional monarchies call the protests “No Tyrants,” he said.
For those unable to attend in person, another activist group, Stand Up For Science, is hosting a “virtual and accessible” event online.
National organizers told reporters in an online news conference Thursday that they expect Saturday’s protests to be larger than the first two rounds of No Kings rallies, which they estimate drew more than 5 million people in June and more than 7 million in October.
“This administration’s actions are angering not just Democratic voters or folks in big blue city centers – they are crossing a line for people in red and rural areas, in the suburbs, all over the country,” said Leah Greenberg, the other co-executive director of Indivisible. “The defining story of this Saturday’s mobilization is not just how many people are protesting, but where they are protesting,”
Two-thirds of the RSVPs have come from outside of major urban centers, Greenberg said, listing registration surges in conservative-leaning states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, South Dakota and Louisiana, as well in competitive suburban areas of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.
“Millions of us are rising up from all walks of life, from rural communities to big cities at No Kings,” said Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn, another major organizer. “And as we do so, we will send the loudest, clearest message yet that this country does not belong to kings, dictators, tyrants. It belongs to us.”
Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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