Ames Yavuz announces representation of Monica Rani Rudhar

Born to Indian and Romanian migrant parents, Monica Rani Rudhar works on Warrane/Sydney land and draws on intergenerational family stories to imagine alternate futures. Her practice navigates cultural conformity, commodification and essentialisation within a settler colonial context, reclaiming fragmented oral histories to restore familial rituals and resist cultural erasure.

Central to the work are jewellery and heirlooms — intimate objects that function as repositories of inherited memory and tangible links to cultural homelands and family members who have passed. Rani Rudhar transforms palm-sized family adornments into large-scale totemic sculptures, meticulously crafted in terracotta and gilded in gold lustre. The materiality of these works mirrors the fragile yet enduring nature of stories passed between generations through objects.

The announcement coincides with Rani Rudhar’s inclusion in the 25th Biennale of Sydney, opening 14 March 2026. Her three-channel video work The fire in me was lit long ago delves into her own family history to interrogate legacies of resistance and endurance — centred on the story of her grandfather, Ram Parkash, a freedom fighter for Indian independence in 1940s Punjab.

A graduate of UNSW Art & Design with First Class Honours, Rani Rudhar has exhibited widely across Australia and internationally. Recent highlights include Primavera: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2024) and Kerameikos at the Chau Chak Wing Museum (2024). Her work is held in major public and private collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artbank and Blacktown Arts, and she has completed significant commissions for Casula Powerhouse and the Powerhouse Museum. She is the recipient of the 2023 Gosford Emerging Art Prize and the 2025 acquisitive Blacktown City Art Prize.