Now on display at Queensland Museum Kurilpa, Where the Map Was Drawn, Memories Remain (2025) invites visitors into a profound exploration of truth, memory and the enduring silences that shape Australia’s colonial history. Crafted from red cedar, ochre, acrylics and wax, the installation reflects artist Dylan Sarra’s ongoing research into stories of Aboriginal resistance, migration and labour connected to Queensland’s Burnett region.
Sarra is a First Nations artist of the Gooreng Gooreng and Taribelang peoples of Central Queensland. His multidisciplinary practice—encompassing sculpture, printmaking, installation and research-based storytelling—is grounded in cultural knowledge and a deep commitment to truth-telling. A five-time finalist in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), Sarra is widely recognised for work that is both personally resonant and culturally significant.
He is also a previous recipient of the Queensland Museum First Nations Fellowship, generously supported by the Queensland Museum Foundation—an experience that helped shape the research underpinning this work.
Left: Artist and Queensland Museum First Nations recipient, Dylan Sarra.
From fractured petroglyphs to a broader truth
Sarra’s Fellowship journey began with an investigation into the fractured petroglyphs of the Burnett River. As Sarra’s Fellowship research developed, he uncovered a deeper narrative: the same colonial systems that enabled the removal of stones from the petroglyph site also contributed to the displacement, conflict and systematic erasure of Aboriginal presence in the region.
Through fieldwork, archival research and community stories, Sarra pieced together evidence of a thriving pre-colonial world—hundreds of groups connected by sophisticated trade networks, stone tools unearthed by farmers, and cultural sites now hidden beneath agricultural expansion. These layered histories form the foundation of the work now exhibited at Queensland Museum.
Gulmari shields as storytellers
At the centre of the installation are a series of hand-carved Gulmari shields, suspended so they appear caught between movement and stillness. Their position evokes the tension between presence and absence—between histories remembered and histories erased.
Each shield is deliberately carved and painted, its weathered ochre surface reflecting the vulnerability and endurance of the stories it carries. The painted fronts portray the flags of nations that have shaped the region, whether through voluntary migration or exploitation. For example, the British flag represents invasion, governance and the systems that enabled removal and dispossession, and the South Sea Islander flag represents the legacy of blackbirding, which saw thousands of Islanders forcibly taken into Queensland’s cane fields.
Breaking “the great silence”
Sarra’s work challenges what historian Jonathan Richards describes as “the great silence”: the deliberate omission of truths surrounding displacement, resistance and survival. By drawing these narratives into the museum space, Where the Map Was Drawn, Memories Remain becomes an act of reclamation—restoring visibility to histories long obscured.
The installation offers no illusions of closure. Instead, it invites visitors to consider the weight of what has been forgotten, and the responsibility of bringing these stories forward.
Left: Gulmari Shield Sculpture featuring Australian South Sea Islander flag by Dylan Sarra. Image: Lee Wilkes
Continuing the conversation
Now exhibited at Queensland Museum, Sarra’s work stands as a powerful continuation of the research he began during his First Nations Fellowship. Through sculpture, story and truth-telling, he illuminates a history that refuses to remain silent—ensuring that, even when the map has shifted, the memories endure.
View Dylan’s work on Level 2 of Queensland Museum, free and open daily 9:30am – 5pm, until 19 April 2026.
Queensland Museum Blog 
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