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Get behind the scenes at this informal conversation between Eastside Projects’ Artist-Maker, Ruth Claxton and artist Emii Alrai. They will be talking through Emii’s practice as well as the work and ideas she is developing for her forthcoming show, The Courtship of Giants, which you will be able to see at Eastside Projects in the new year.
Emii’s practice is informed by inherited nostalgia, geographical identity, and post-colonial museum practices of collecting and displaying objects. You can expect to hear about research, materials, titling, scaling up, museums, weapons, hunting traps, process, armatures, willow weaving, and more.
Emii Alrai is an artist based in Leeds. Focusing on the ancient mythologies from the Middle East alongside personal oral histories of Iraq, Emii weaves together narratives by forging artefacts and visualising residues of cultural collision. Drawing references from objects in museum collections, ancient writing from the Middle East and cultural memories, her work questions the value and origins of artefacts, as well as navigating the experience of diaspora.
She studied her BA in Fine Art and an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at The University of Leeds. In 2020, she undertook a residency in Calabria with In-ruins, Italy, and was selected for the Triangle Asterides Residency, Marseille. In 2019, she participated in the Arab British Centre Making Marks Project in Kuwait and the 2018 Tetley Artist Associate Programme. Upcoming and Recent group and solo exhibitions include: Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK (2022), Visual Arts Centre, Clarington, Canada (2021), Threshold, Leeds, UK (2021), Jerwood Arts, London, UK (2021), The Tetley, Leeds, UK (2020); VITRINE, London (2019), Fallow, Rectory Projects (2019), Two Queens, Leicester, UK (2019); GLOAM, Sheffield, UK (2018); (2018); Caustic Casual, Salford, UK (2017); Hutt Collective, Nottingham, UK (2017).
