Monica Rani Rudhar

I was really excited to be part of Kerameikos. I'm really interested in storytelling and the different ways we preserve histories. I usually make work by delving into my own records, whether that be in the form of personal stories, photos, heirlooms. This project really challenged my way of making by responding to an archive that wasn't my own.

I was drawn to a pair of Hellenistic earrings in the museum's collections that date back to the late fourth century BC. These earrings were found in a burial site in Patmos, Greece, where personal items were buried with the dead to be taken with them into the afterlife. There really isn't much more we know about them, but we can guess that they probably belonged to a very wealthy woman. Perhaps they were her favourite earrings or a gift. I guess in comparison to my own Indian cultural practices, jewellery has always been passed down in the family after someone had died. 

Jewellery was never really buried and instead a person's life and legacy lived on in the objects that were passed on. Relying on the individual to preserve and safeguard. The earrings feature eight-fold rosette pattern in red.

This flower pattern is a recurring motif in Indian jewellery, and I was intrigued by how this pattern found itself in the Greek islands of Patmos. As patterns were shared back and forth as jewellery was traded along the Silk Road, the earrings demonstrated how styles and motifs fused with those from other cultures. This resonated with me as I drew a similarity to that of my Romanian and Indian upbringing, where I experienced the joining and melding of two cultures. My final piece incorporates this rosette pattern into the design of some Indian earrings my partner gifted to me. They have a green stone and were customised with gold balls and jhumkis. 

I combine these two designs to reclaim the rosette pattern and also to contemplate the legacy and story that my own jewellery will carry as it is passed on, as an heirloom, as it outlives my own mortality.