Emii Alrai
Emii Alrai (b.1993, Blackpool, Scotland, Leeds) is an artist and trained museum registrar whose work spans material investigation in relation to memory, critique of the western museological structure and the complexity of ruins. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her work operates as large-scale realms built in relation to bodies of research which concern archaeology and the natural environments objects are excavated from. Weaving in oral histories, inherited nostalgia, and the details of language to question the rigidity of Empire and the power of hierarchy to interpolate the static presence of history. Clay vessels, gypsum forms and steel armatures punctuate the labyrinth-like spaces Alrai creates mimicking museum dioramas and romanticized visions of the past.
Her project at Villa Medici
Emii Alrai will work with the library and archive at Villa Medici to research the origin of myths and legends depicted in the plasters found in the Villas collection. Focusing on motifs which depict congregation, war, and the natural world to and investigate the drama in which these scenes are portrayed in the casts, to question the tension between fictions and realities of heroism and violence in relation to the construction and fall of Empire.
Pulling from previous research into Ursula K Le Guins Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction to reconsider the histories and narratives lost in favour of what Le Guin terms histories of progression, which mostly constitute of histories of violence, Alrai will spend time studying, collecting and drawings plants from the grounds at Villa Medicis.
Working closely with this collated research and material, Alrai will focus her residency on drawing and developing sculptural plaster works which act as mimicries of the plasters found at the Villa, testing new material textures and experimenting with the physical manifestation of alterior histories and world building narratives.