Emii Alrai

Now, today I am feeling allured or magnetized or enthralled and definitely enraptured because today I have the great privilege of sitting opposite a dear friend of mine who actually, in a way, I think we were friends first.

I discovered her work through Quench, and she's now become a colleague because since that show, I remember the day that Carl Freedman, who I work with, um, here in Margate, he came up to me and said, "What about Emii Alrai? Like, she's so incredible." And yeah, they'd become friends as well I think in the meantime.

Yeah, it's just been a wonderful, uh, experience over the past kind of six to eight months where we've really got to know each other because Emii came to stay for many months in Margate, thanks to Tracy Emin's international kind of artist residency.

And even though Emii lives in Scotland, [laughs] she managed to get onto that incredible program, and she had a studio here for about four to six months.

And her whole, uh, universe that she creates is so rewarding because there's all these different ideas of, like, empire and the hierarchy of kind of, um, history and also very poetic responses to the human condition and what it is to be alive and what it is to love and what it is to believe in something.

So we will, um, explore these themes right now.

So I would like to welcome to Talk Art, Emii Alrai.

Hello.