Monica Rani Rudhar
Born 1994, Australia
Lives and works on Gadigal Land (Sydney), Australia 

The fire in me was lit long ago 2026
three-channel video installation, looped 8 mins
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body
Courtesy of the artist and Ames Yavuz 

Following four narrative threads, Monica Rani Rudhar’s The fire in me was lit long ago delves into the artist’s own familial history to interrogate the legacies of resistance and endurance she has inherited. The fire in me was lit long ago’s central story is that of the artist’s grandfather, Ram Parkash, a freedom fighter for Indian Independence in 1940s Punjab. 

Evoking the sugarcane clearing where Ram would gather with his friends to build gunpowder bombs, The fire in me was lit long ago transforms the plantation into a site of defiance rather than a symbol of colonial oppression. A golden lion ring, a family heirloom gifted to Rudhar’s father when he immigrated to Australia, stands as a symbol of courage. Infused with his mother’s love and presence, it also creates an unexcepted connection to the Lion of Punjab, Lala Lajpat Rai. That an anti-British revolutionary’s policy of defiance makes up part of Rudhar’s cultural inheritance is amplified by this work’s additional tales, her father’s close encounter with a snake and a racially motivated attack at the hands of his wife’s father. Awash in bright colours and alive with poetry, The fire in me was lit long ago acknowledges the generational trauma of colonial policy while honouring courage as a generational legacy. It interrogates what these stories transmit across time as an inheritance, shaping how we understand power and responsibility, and informing how we navigate a world marked by inequality.