Monumental as Anything

Monumental as Anything presented a new commission by artist Keg de Souza, shaped by the stories of Aruna Gandhi, a local Albury resident, and her garden. Curated by Evgenia Anagnostopoulou, the exhibition drew out the knowledge, experiences, and memories held by Aruna’s garden and its capacity to rethink how to forge migration narratives within Albury-Wodonga.

The exhibition featured an assemblage of prints and casted objects that trace the textures of the garden, like the surti papdi pods and curry leaves that grow there, delicately encased by garden netting. Monumental as Anything, developed as a collaborative project between De Souza, Aruna and Anagnostopoulou, revealed how migration stories don’t need to be held by static structures carved in marble or forged in steel. Gardens, like memories, grow and wither with time and depend on care and maintenance. They are living systems. They listen and respond to the shifting communities and seasons of the region— and the histories they leave behind.

Moving away from the monument and the museum as privileged and colonial structures for memory-making, the exhibition considered how the garden can offer alternative physical and social forms to remember local migration histories while grappling with living on unceded lands as settlers.

Monumental as Anything is commissioned as part of the curatorial program Parallel Structures (2023-2024), led by Verónica Tello (UNSW Art & Design) and Salote Tawale (Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney) in collaboration with the Murray Art Museum Albury. Parallel Structures is the exhibition outcome of the Australian Research Council project Parallel (2021-2024). For more information, please visit https://parallelstructures.art. Thanks to the Parallel Advisory Network, Runway Journal, the Australian Research Council, Create NSW, Creative Australia, and the School of Art & Design, University of New South Wales, for their generous support.

Artist bio
Keg de Souza is an artist of Goan ancestry who lives and works on unceded Gadigal land. Architecturally trained, she creates social and spatial environments, making reference to her lived experiences of squatting and organising with projects that use plant and food politics, temporary architecture, publishing and radical pedagogy. De Souza draws from personal experiences of colonialism – from her own ancestral lands being colonised to living as a settler on other peoples unceded lands – to inform her layered projects that centre marginalised voices and lesser-known stories for learning about Place.

Curator bio
Evgenia Anagnostopoulou is a curator and producer from Athens, Greece, working on unceded Gadigal land. She is an assistant programs producer at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW) and a Masters of Fine Art (Curating) candidate at the University of NSW. Her interests lie in artistic and institutional forms of resistance and alternative methods of knowledge production. She has previously organised curatorial projects at AGNSW, Firstdraft and Kudos Gallery, undertaken studies at BAK (Netherlands) and held positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Biennale of Sydney.