Dylan Mooney is a proud Yuwi man from Mackay, Queensland with cultural connections to the Torres Strait and South Sea Islands. Working across painting, printmaking, digital illustration and drawing, his works are influenced by a rich intersection and amalgamation of identities, cultures and histories. Often speaking to the shared experiences of First Nations peoples in a collective sense, Mooney visually translates stories of resilience, survival, connection and love. He has exhibited widely across Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne, with his work commissioned by Google, Rolling Stone and Art Collector.
For Portrait23: Identity, Dylan is creating a series of hand-drawn illustrative portraits of his arts community from Central/North Queensland, with text and language physically stitched into the paper with natural fibres. The statements reflect the preciousness of intergenerational knowledge transfer and the continuation of culture and identity through language, anchored in ancient practice.
Rebecca: Tell us about your Portrait23: Identity work.
Dylan: This drawing series depicts what appears to be simply portraits of Indigenous people from Central/North Queensland, but which are overlaid with text. The statements reflect what we hold precious to us and how we communicate these languages that have been passed down to us through our families, culture and communities. The overall theme is looking at how these statements – whether they be political, everyday words, funny, positive, negative, cultural – can change the meaning of a portrait when they are superimposed on the work. It’s about telling our story of resilience, thriving, survival, how far we’ve come as a people, what we’ve achieved ... and where we’ll be in the future.
Rebecca: Can you talk about the sitters featured within your work?
Dylan: I’ve chosen people who I have a connection with, but who I haven’t necessarily known for a long time. I was looking for the language we use when we meet each other, especially as Indigenous people growing up in Queensland, we have that common language up here that connects us no matter where we come from. For example, I have Kyra Mackletow, we’ve been best friends for about six years now. And the artist Tony Albert.
Rebecca: You’ve incorporated that language throughout the work. Could you talk a little bit more about that and why it’s really significant?
Dylan: So with the text, I’m looking at Aboriginal English or even Creole as well, because I think it’s so ingrained within our culture and our identities. We can go anywhere and just walk up to a person and introduce ourselves. And we know just straight away from that language, we make that connection instantly as well. So I’m stitching the language into the actual paper that I’m using to show that the symbolism of our language is ingrained within our identities, within our culture. I’m hoping to use natural fibres to also bring it back to culture and the lands that we live on and where we travel, all of that.
Rebecca: Your work is divided up into smaller pieces that fit together to make a whole. What made you decide on that specific composition style?
Dylan: It just came down to experimentation. For me the pieces represent our histories, looking back at our histories of Australia and within Queensland, that separation and that dispossession, but also looking now into the present day, we come from so many places as well. And then bringing these separate panels together, just talking back to that connection to place and Country, and to community as well, because community is a very big part of who I am and who we are as Indigenous peoples.
Rebecca: I think a lot of people would be familiar with your vibrant, colourful digital art. So with Portrait23: Identity, what made you decide on this pencil illustration?
Dylan: Because people do know me for my digital works now, I wanted to show I can go into other mediums and techniques as well, and it was just good to go back to where I first started off as an artist. The digital work is a new thing for me still, I’ve only been doing it for about three years now, but pencil and paper was my original and my first ever style. So just getting back into that and making sure I don’t lose that connection with the pencil and paper.
