Tracey Moffatt’s series Body Remembers (2017) draws its title and responds to the poem by Constantine P. Cavafy (1918). In each of the series of large photographs we see a woman alone, in the ruins of colonial buildings, on the shadows of eroded stones. We see her looking out of windows, looking out into the distance. As the viewer, we see the back of the woman’s head, or the shadow of the woman, or her face that is covered by her hands as the Aboriginal woman maidservant looking out. The body in this title could be read as both our country and our flesh. The sovereign woman mourns. What do we mourn?

Wardlipari is the homeriver in the Milky Way.
Purlirna kardlarna ngadluku miyurnaku yaintya tikkiarna.

The stars are the fires of people living there. Yurarlu yurakauwi trruku-ana padninthi Wardlipari.

Yurakauwi the rainbow serpent goes into the dark spots in the Milky Way.
Ngaiyirda karralika kawingka tikainga yara kumarninthi.

When the outer world and the sky connect with the water the two become one.