The Cube: Monica Rani Rudhar

In The Cube, artist Monica Rani Rudhar restages her video work We Were Connected in a More Complicated Way Than Either of Us Could Even Begin to Understand (2023) first shown as part of Primavera 2024, Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Monica is an artist based on Gadigal land, working across sculpture, video, and performance. Her practice explores the themes of longing and loss related to cultural identity, tracing intergenerational stories within her family to create space for imaginative possibilities. Born to Indian and Romanian migrant parents, her work is influenced by the forces of cultural conformity, essentialization, and commodification within a settler colonial context. Monica’s practice seeks to restore familial histories, traditions, and rituals that have been dispersed by the migration and displacement of her ancestors. 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.

In this video work, Monica Rani Rudhar ruminates on a past life where she existed as her mother’s childhood cow, providing comfort and companionship through her mother’s difficult childhood in Romania. Taking on the voice of Monica the cow, Rudhar reimagines the nurturing relationship between them, offering a comforting and maternal voice to guide her mother.

Drawing connections with Hindu beliefs of reincarnation and the sacredness of cows, the work considers cycles of death and renewal, the impermanence of the body and ancestral guidance across generations. The cow is sacred in Hindu beliefs, representing nourishment, motherhood and purity.

Rudhar brings together intergenerational narratives and her cultural background, tracing stories within her family to create space for imaginative possibilities. Through an auto-ethnographical approach, she weaves together personal mythologies, cultural fictions, futures and pasts. The work becomes an intimate and tender conversation that considers longing, loss and legacies across generations.

“I recall my mother’s stories about her beloved childhood cow, Monica, and though she denies naming me after her, I like to imagine a past where I existed as this cow and was able to comfort my mum through her difficult childhood.”

Commissioned by Powerhouse in 2023 for Holi, a major Hindu festival of colour, love and spring, the work connects with ideas of renewal and transformation. The work was inspired by Object No. 17431 from the Powerhouse Collection; a specimen of yellow-coloured pigment puree, or Indian Yellow that was commonly used in the 19th century. It is a dye originating from India, made in the bladder of a cow fed only mango leaves and water.

Mosman Art Gallery Education: Learning Resource for Monica Rani Rudhar

Download the Learning Resource for Years 7-12