Terminal Patient Auctions Her Time in 'Time to Live' Performance

On August 17, 2024, at Carriageworks in Sydney, 31-year-old Australian artist Emily Lahey, diagnosed with a rare incurable cancer in 2019, staged a relational performance titled 'Time to Live.' Approximately thirty participants purchased three-minute intervals to sit beside her, share confidences, and confront mortality. The event, organized with the Australian Cancer Research Foundation, was documented on video by Tony Prescott, showing a timer counting down each encounter. Lahey's work draws inevitable comparisons to Marina Abramović's 'The Artist Is Present' but with a radically different premise: raising awareness about cancer and funding research. The performance blurs art and social activism, urging gratitude for life while supporting research to grant more time to those with terminal illnesses.