Monica Rani Rudhar

Monica Rani Rudhar  is an Indian/Romanian artist working on Gadigal Land across video, performance and sculpture. Born to Indian and Romanian migrant parents, her work speaks to longing and loss as she navigates the cultural disconnection that stems from the complexities of her multi-racial ethnicity.  Her work is delicately personal and takes the shape of a restorative autobiographical archive that seeks to record her own histories where these stories can exist permanently, unlike those that have been passed down orally from her family which remain fragmented. Through her auto-ethnographic approach, she translates her family’s fragmented oral histories to reclaim narratives of relationships, resistance, and ritual. These stories intertwine, weaving a personal mythology that manifests their cultural fictions and futures in so-called Australia.

Rudhar graduated from University of New South Wales with a BFA in Art and Design (2021) and her practice attempts to restore familial histories, traditions and rituals that have been dispersed by migration, drawing on the labour required to move past barriers that stand in the way of reforging connections.  Monica’s sculptures focus on her personal relationship to South East Asian Jewellery and its power in bridging a connection to her heritage. Rooted in the significant events where certain pieces have either been lost, gifted or taken away, Monica draws on how these totemic objects unite her with her distant family who live overseas, and a culture that she feels disconnected from.  The significance of these objects is exemplified through scale and repetition which act to memorialise these heirlooms and give permanence to oral histories.  

As a testament to Monica’s status as one of the most exciting emerging artists working in Australia, in 2024 she was been curated into three public exhibitions across NSW and Victoria, with major installations at: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Primavera), Bunjil Place Gallery, Chau Chak Wing Museum. 

In 2025 Rudhar was the recipient of the Blacktown City Art Prize and in 2023 she was also the recipient of the Art Incubator grant, as well as the winner of the 2023 Gosford Regional gallery Emerging Art Prize. In early 2026 Rudhar will present work at the 25th Biennale of Sydney.