Tutelaries

Alrai’s sensibility towards shared histories enables her to carefully construct meaning around the work she produces using humble materials such as cardboard, clay, plaster, sand and metal. Her heavy processes of patination and oxidisation makes her work look worn and aged, imitating wall textures seen in the Middle East.

For ‘Tutelaries’, Alrai draws from the concept of a tutelary as a protector or guardian, which expresses the concept of safety usually associated with a sacred location. The conflicting settings of an ancient space, a contemporary art gallery and public square furthers Alrai’s research into the displacement of stolen artefacts and their display in western museums.

The art objects displayed become tutelary relics, however, in their reconfiguration they are replicas or false tutelary objects appropriated for western display. The notion of protector is pertinent to historic relics, which today remain housed in museums or collections removed from their original placement and out of danger, and Alrai assigns her contemporary objects to such protection, creating fictional artefacts and cultural residue.

Alrai's installation transforms VITRINE’s unique space by lining the walls with painted cardboard to echo that of a tomb, housing the series of wall and floor based sculptures. Mostly made from air-dry clay, which is burnished with tar paint as well as copper leaf or powder, the pots, vases and nails are displayed on armatures, on the floor and on shelving. This display method furthers the artist's engagement with the physical structure of western museums and their display methods.

By re-staging the inherent identity of objects, both personal or geographic, Alrai explored the histories and heritage of their attached narratives.