ABSTRACT
Based on Marina Abramović’s renowned The Artist is Present (2010), this chapter investigates The Aborigine is Present (2015) – an interactive performance staged in the Koorie Heritage Trust Gallery at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia. Members of the public were invited to sit opposite Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and be ‘present’ with them (silent and sharing a mutual gaze). The assemblage and presence of Aboriginal bodies provided a rare opportunity for the general public to engage intimately with the traditional owners of the land on which they were sitting and living. I argue that the act of staging and asserting the presence of the Aboriginal body is a radical and provocative gesture in the face of the colonial myth of terra nullius in Australia and its pervasive and ongoing resonances in postcolonial Australia.
