Australia Drops Khaled Sabsabi as Representative to 2026 Venice Biennale
152Feb. 14, 2025
Government arts council Creative Australia, which last week announced thatKhaled Sabsabiwould represent the country at the Sixty-FirstVenice Biennale, has dropped both the Lebanese-born conceptual artist and his longtime supporter Michael Dagostino, the director of the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, who was to have organized the Australian pavilion. The decision to part ways with the team arrived on the heels of a February 12 article inThe Australianthat described the pavilion as a “creative approach to racism.” Sabsabi, who fled Tripoli as a child as Lebanon’s civil war raged and is now based in Sydney, is known for multimedia works themed around issues of conflict and identity, and concerned with shattering stereotypes of Muslim and Arab people.
Yoni Bashan and Nick Evans, the writers of the article, pointed to Sabsabi’s 2007 video installationYou, which they suggested shows Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a positive light, and to the artist’s boycott of the 2022 Sydney Festival after the event accepted $20,000 in funding from the Israeli Embassy. The day after the article’s publication, Liberal Senator Claire Chandler, speaking in Parliament, questioned the choice of Sabsabi to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale, mentioning the “appalling anti-Semitism” rampant in Australia and citing bothYouand a work titledThank You Very Much, which incorporates imagery of jetliners crashing into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Creative Australia that evening in a press release announced that it was dropping Sabsabi and Dagostino.
“Creative Australia is an advocate for freedom of artistic expression and is not an adjudicator on the interpretation of art,” the organization said in a statement. “However, the board believes a prolonged and divisive debate about the 2026 selection outcome poses an unacceptable risk to public support for Australia’s artistic community and could undermine our goal of bringing Australians together through art and creativity.”
Creative Australia has yet to announce a replacement for Sabsabi. Bigambul-Kamilaroi artist Archie Moore, who represented Australia last year, became the first Australian to win the event’s prestigious Golden Lion.