Study for Rice Vessel

Emii Alrai (1993 - )

ink on rice paper

2021
  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection
    Emii Alrai’s drawing Study for Rice Vessel imagines a particular type of vessel, as an artefact. Vessels have been used since time immemorial as containers, to hold and preserve. They are also metaphors for the human body as a container. ‘We all carry sediments from the past through our own bodies,’ Alrai reflects, ‘passed through generations, like ancestral memory.’ Emii Alrai is interested in how European or ‘Western’ museums show historical artefacts from other cultures. A key interest in her work is in exploring how the removal and display of these artefacts impacts on identities of both, the nations who display these objects and the diaspora from West Asia or the ‘Middle East,’ where many of the artefacts she is interested in originate. She is curious about what this does to the object itself, what is ascribed to it in the memory of those whose heritage is tied to the areas these artefacts are found in, how it becomes defined in the institutions that it is displayed in; and the ways in which it is seen by others.
  • About the artist
    Emii Alrai was born in Blackpool and received her BFA from the University of Leeds, which included a year at the École Supérieure d’art et de design Marseille-Méditerranée in France. She went on to an MA in Gallery and Museum studies, also at Leeds, graduating in 2018. She has had solo exhibitions at The Grundy, Blackpool (2023); The Hepworth Wakefield; Iniva, London; Eastside Projects, Birmingham (all 2022); Threshold, Leeds (2021); Jerwood Arts, London (2021) and The Tetley at Leeds 2020). Her work has been included in group exhibitions most recently at the Centre of Contemporary Art Glasgow (2024); Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton (2023); Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati, US (2023); Bluecoat, Liverpool (2022); McIntosh Gallery, Western University, Ontario, Canada; and Assembly Point, London (2021).
  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    still life
    Materials & Techniques
    paper (as artists material), ink, Ink drawing
  • Details
    Title
    Study for Rice Vessel
    Date
    2021
    Medium
    ink on rice paper
    Dimensions
    height: 40.0 cm; width: 40 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Iniva, March 2022
    Provenance
    Institute of International Visual Arts, London UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 25 March 2022
    GAC number
    19056