Title: Tear Jug

Year: 2024

Media: Ink

Size: 28 x 21 cm

About the work: Tear Jug is a vessel ruminating on water ewers, votive presentations of saintly ephemera and the leaking of both histories and bodies which are decidedly contained through structures of empire and exalted through time through the symbols chosen for them.

Bio: Emii Alrai 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. 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. Her material explorations weave in oral histories, inherited nostalgia and the details of language to question the rigidity of Empire, the power of hierarchy and the static presence of history. Clay vessels, gypsum forms and steel armatures punctuate the labyrinth-like spaces Alrai creates, mimicking museum dioramas and romanticised visions of the past.