Dylan Mooney
Dylan is among artists who are rethinking digital technologies and artistic practices to consider contemporary issues around identity, desire, and representation. Interested in the ways in which we can reframe the conversation around some of the voices that have been left out, the artist has made an important body of work that embodies a shift in representation of queer love among people of colour.
Artist statement
Early sugar production required a large workforce that was both affordable and accessible, so Queensland plantation owners suggested using ‘coloured’ labour. This meant using workers from the South Sea Islands instead of white Australians or Europeans. South Sea Islanders could be employed very cheaply, and some people believed that white Australians were not suited to hard work in Queensland’s tropical climate. Growing up on Yuwiburra country (Mackay) with a familiar landscape of sugar mills with bellowing smoke and sugarcane fields as far as the eye can see, I think about our history, as well as the hard work and struggles of our community. In this work I insert our South Sea People into this landscape to draw focus to the workers and family names who worked in these sugar mills.