Emii Alrai’s 2025 Visual Arts commission at Bold Tendencies, Guardian, goes on loan to Edinburgh Arts Festival from 14–30 August 2026.

Installed atop Calton Hill, the work takes the form of a colossal, fragmented relic inspired by mythical icons of ancient civilisations, in direct dialogue with the unfinished National Monument of Scotland, often called “Edinburgh’s Disgrace.”

Drawing on Alrai’s British-Iraqi heritage, Guardian references Sumerian divine beings the Lamassu, while engaging with histories of excavation, displacement, and empire. Its vivid blue patina and exposed armature evoke both preservation and decay.

Following its commission for Bold Tendencies in 2025, the work is built upon and ruptured into ghostly fragments, proposing a monument that acknowledges fracture, and reimagines how the past is held in the present.