Emii Alrai: Lures

Carl Freedman Gallery presents Lures, a solo exhibition by Scottish-Iraqi artist Emii Alrai exploring sculpture, myth and inherited memory through excavation and archaeolog About Carl Freedman Gallery is proud to present Lures, a solo exhibition by Scottish-Iraqi artist Emii Alrai. Lures unfolds as a sculptural landscape shaped by excavation, myth and inherited memory. Alrai transforms the gallery into a shifting terrain, where fragments appear caught between ruin and reconstruction. Drawing on the aesthetics of archaeology and museology, her installations consider how objects become vessels for power, belief and cultural inheritance. The exhibition centres on the idea of the "lure": an object that attracts, deceives or promises access to something beyond reach. Through vessels, architectural forms and sculptural interventions, Alrai explores the relationship between desire, geography and the body. Across the gallery, clay, steel and carved polystyrene form a landscape of partial monuments, reliquaries and speculative artefacts. Sculptures resembling unearthed vessels, carved landscapes and provisional structures operate as decoys, suggesting authenticity while revealing their constructed nature. Running throughout the exhibition is a tension between romance and violence, explored through heart burial, a practice particularly prevalent during the Crusades. Reserved largely for royalty, nobles and high-ranking figures, it involved the hearts of crusaders being preserved and returned from the Holy Land or elsewhere in Europe for burial at home, while others sent their hearts onwards to Jerusalem when unable to complete the journey themselves. These movements created a network of human remains crossing geographical and spiritual borders. Alrai is drawn to the allegorical charge of the heart as the imagined centre of desire and longing, physically attached to a desired place and forging connections to land through memory and devotion. Some vessel forms draw on Alrai's research into the ornate containers used to house buried hearts, elevating human remains through ornamentation and care. Together, these elements create an environment where the past feels both present and fabricated, in which myth, memory and material evidence continually blur. Read more Toggle Mixed media Installation Sculpture