Home is something we are born into — and something we carry with us throughout life, wherever we go and however old we become. It is rarely just the flat or house where we grew up. It runs deeper than that, living in the quiet, warm memories of our parents and family, in the small rituals and details others might never notice — the ones that stay with us softly, almost unconsciously.

In this series, we step into the inner worlds of Middle Eastern artists, tracing the stories that began long ago, where the idea of home takes centre stage.

Home can take many forms, though it is rarely just a physical space. Take Egyptian contemporary artist Alaa Ayman as an example. For her, home is rooted in the people who shaped her — the memories held within her family that gradually become the core of her work. There is something deeply sensitive and full of love in the way she approaches these recollections.

One of her works, The Wedding, draws directly from her parents’ wedding videotapes and photographs — personal archives transformed into painted recollections.

This sense of intimacy was also evident in the pieces she presented at the annual My Favourite Things group exhibition in Cairo. Her contribution featured eight small paintings that resembled faded snapshots — fragments that might have been lifted from an old family album and reimagined through her own visual language. As Alaa explains, these works are not direct redrawings of real photographs, but intimate memories of her childhood — tender reflections on what home has meant to her.

Hana El-Sagini is an Egyptian artist whose work moves across memory, personal storytelling and, quite unmistakably, the idea of home.

In her major solo exhibition 42 Bahgat Aly — titled after the address closely tied to her childhood memories — she immersed herself fully in the concept of home and everything it holds. The exhibition brought together paintings and interior-based works that revisited rooms from her family house: bedrooms, living areas and intimate corners quietly charged with memory.

Rather than replicating these spaces exactly, El-Sagini focused on small, tangible details. It is through these fragments that viewers begin to sense presence and absence — the subtle traces of inherited identity.

One of the most powerful parts of the exhibition is her Parents’ Bedroom series, where she turns to a space children rarely have full access to — a room that feels almost sacred. It is both private and central, hidden yet at the very heart of the family.

Ahed Al Kathiri is a Yemeni artist whose work also centres on the idea of home not as a physical structure, but as on memory and inheritance. For her, home has always been closely tied to her grandmother and the house in Sana’a where she spent her childhood summers. Those annual visits shaped her sense of belonging, until they stopped with the outbreak of war. The interruption created distance — not only geographical, but emotional. Unable to return, Ahed began reconstructing home through art.

This approach crystallised in her graduation project during her Fine Arts degree, titled “Home Dreaming,” where she rebuilt fragments of home through material and symbolism. Two elements became central to the series.

The first was her grandmother’s clothing. Ahed transformed the garments into pillows, using the original fabrics as carriers of memory. Even after years, the textiles held a sense of familiarity — scent and presence.

The second element was the qamariyat — traditional Yemeni stained-glass windows that filter light while preserving privacy. While some see them as symbols of a closed culture, for her they represent intimacy and protection — the quiet sense of safety they created within the home. In her installations, the qamariyat function almost like portals.

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are a Lebanese duo whose work is grounded in home and memory. Their practice frequently starts with personal material and expands into reflections on national and sometimes wider historical narratives. At the centre of their work is the family archive.

I Must First Apologize… began with something entirely ordinary: Khalil’s mother’s inbox. She had been receiving spam emails — the familiar “Nigerian scam” letters — filled with dramatic stories of war, hidden fortunes and political crises. Although they arrived in a private domestic space, they carried narratives shaped by global instability. By collecting and exhibiting these emails, the artists revealed how world events quietly enter even the most intimate corners of the home.

Family archives take on an even more central role in Memory Box. The film is built from real materials — Joana’s teenage diaries, letters, photographs and cassette tapes from Beirut in the 1980s. These documents are not mere references; they form the very structure of the narrative, allowing personal memory to rebuild both a family history and the story of a changing city.

As a daughter uncovers her mother’s past, the film reveals not only an intimate transformation, but also the shifting face of Beirut itself. In this way, private memory becomes a means of reconstructing history.