This talk explored The high dam exhibition and Alrai’s practice, informed by inherited nostalgia, geographical identity and postcolonial museum practices of collecting and displaying objects. Focusing on ancient mythologies from the Middle East alongside personal oral histories of Iraq, Alrai weaves together narratives by forging artefacts and visualising residues of cultural collision.
The Tetley presents a digital in conversation event between Emii Alrai and Griselda Pollock.
About the speakers
Emii Alrai graduated from the University of Leeds in 2016 and has since exhibited at VITRINE, GLOAM, Sheffield and Two Queens, Leicester. Her exhibition House of teeming cattle at Two Queens, featured in a-n The Artists Information Company’s The Week’s Top Exhibitions. She has been selected as an Sculpture Network artist by Yorkshire Sculpture International and was nominated by The Hepworth Wakefield as one of three artists from the UK to take part in Making marks, a project exploring the impact of international working on emerging artists, supported by Arab British Centre in 2019.
Griselda Pollock is a visual theorist, cultural analyst and scholar of international, postcolonial feminist studies in the visual arts. Pollock is well known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with readings of historical and contemporary art, film and cultural theory. Since 1977, Griselda Pollock has been one of the most influential scholars of modern, avant-garde art, postmodern art, and contemporary art. Pollock is recipient of the 2020 Holberg Prize, for her groundbreaking contributions to feminist art history and cultural studies.