Emii Alrai was born to Iraqi parents in Blackpool, England, in 1993 and was educated in England and France. Alrai is established as a sculptor and installation artist exploring themes of archelogy, collecting, displacement, history and Western museum practices.
Artist and trained museum registrar, Emii Alrai was born to Iraqi parents in Blackpool, England, in 1993. Between 2011 and 2016, she studied for a BA in Fine Arts at the University of Leeds. During her dgree, she spent a year (2014–15) in France on an Erasmus exchange at École Supérieure d'Art et de Design Marseille-Méditerranée. She then enrolled in an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies, continuing at the University of Leeds, graduating in 2018.
Alrai’s art practice explores the interplay between memory and materials, while critically examining the structures and practices of Western museums and the nature of ruins. Her oeuvre primarily consists of sculpture and installation – using clay, gypsum, and steel – through which she constructs large-scale work. These pieces are rooted in extensive research in the fields of archaeology and ethnology and the specific natural settings where artifacts are unearthed. The material result is then enriched by incorporating oral history, which brings with it a nostalgic sentimentality and linguistic nuances. All of these elements, together, serve to challenge the inflexibility of imperial structures and the influence of social stratification in shaping a static historical narrative. Her sculptures and installations are reminiscent of museum displays, but in a way that overturns conventional practices and thus questions the romantic interpretation of history. To do so, she often mixes ancient Middle Eastern mythologies with the oral traditions of her Iraqi background, generating pieces reminiscent of archaeological finds. Alrai's art seeks to highlight the disparity between the refined appearance of museum exhibits and the deteriorated condition of archaeological finds and their original landscapes.
Alrai has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally and in the UK. For her commission at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2022, A Core of Scar, she exhibited photographs, sketches, and small timber-framed sculptures covered in pigment, plaster, polystyrene, plaster, and sand, and designed a series of handcrafted glass pieces resembling ancient burial urns. These were marked by imperfections, suggesting scars and seams, symbolising the violent displacement of objects from their original location and metaphorically aligned with traumatic displacement in migratory and diaspora communities. Accompanying these pieces were engravings of Yorkshire, from the museum's own collections, showing landscapes eroded by glaciers, using recalling the scars of human bodies. Alrai took inspiration from ancient rock structures, such as those in Devil’s Arrows in North Yorkshire and Nine Maidens in Cornwall. By merging body, landscape, and memory, the project explored the physical remnants of history. The same year, by employing willow weaving methods on cardboard and plaster, she designed an immersive maze-like structure for her solo exhibition The Courtship of Giants at Eastside Projects in Birmingham. Thematically, she interlinked the Gilgamesh saga, the British Museum's Iraqi artifacts, medieval hunts, courtship evolution, ancient burial sites, and the Pre-Raphaelite fascination with wounds and melancholy, exploring issues of longing, hunting, and romanticised museum collecting, while subtly addressing histories of conflict and conquest. Her 2024 solo exhibition Lithics, at Quench Gallery in Margate, showcased sculptures and drawings in a way which mirrored archaeological discoveries and the drama inherent in museum display, incorporating drawings arranged in rock-like forms, sculpture fragments, and aged clay containers, the results of seven years of exploring geology via travel and collections study. In 2024, Alrai also made a temporary site-specific public sculpture, Guardian, for Aldgate Square in London. The bovine piece was inspired by mythical creatures of antiquity, specifically the protective deities positioned at the gates of ancient cities, such as Babylon. The abstracted sculpture is engineered to gather rainwater in its open upper section, which is then channelled through its udders.
Alrai has also held a number of residencies and workshops, and received several awards. In 2016, she began with a Graduate residency at The Art House in Wakefield, also winning the FUAM Graduate Art Prize at The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds. The following year, in 2017, she received the Club: Studio bursary, also from The Art House. In 2018, she participated in The Tetley Artist Associate Programme in Yorkshire and was recipient of the Club: Making Matters commission from Yorkshire Sculpture International. In 2019, she was named the Yorkshire Sculpture International Engagement Artist, further establishing her presence in the Yorkshire art scene. In 2020 she joined the Yorkshire Sculpture International Sculpture Network. In 2021, Alrai hosted a Sculpture Workshop at Chisenhale Gallery in London and received a Creative Fellowship at the University of Leicester. In 2023, she received the Jerwood New Work Fund Award and was also shortlisted for the Frieze Artist Award. She is represented by Maximillian William, London. Emii Alrai lives and works in Leeds, while maintaining a studio in Wakefield. In the UK public domain, her work is held in the collections of the British Museum and the Hepworth Wakefield.