Australia’s plans for the following Venice Biennale lie in ruins, after the nation’s chosen artist and curator had been sensationally dumped within the wake of a severely important newspaper article.
The Sydney-based multimedia artist Khaled Sabsabi was final week introduced because the artist representing Australia in 2026.
Sabsabi’s long-term supporter and colleague Michael Dagostino—the director of Sydney College’s Chau Chak Wing Museum—was introduced because the curator who would work alongside the artist for Venice.
Eventually week’s media announcement within the Sydney suburb of Granville the place Lebanese-born Sabsabi grew up, Artistic Australia’s chief government officer Adrian Collette mentioned Sabsabi and Dagostino “proceed a proud custom of showcasing distinctive inventive expertise at this vital world arts occasion [the Venice Biennale]”.
However not fairly every week later—on Thursday night time, Sydney time—Artistic Australia threw each its Venice picks overboard.
“The Board of Artistic Australia has made the unanimous resolution to not proceed with the inventive group chosen for the Venice Biennale 2026,” the assertion mentioned.
“Artistic Australia is an advocate for freedom of inventive expression and isn’t an adjudicator on the interpretation of artwork. Nonetheless, the board believes a protracted and divisive debate concerning the 2026 choice final result poses an unacceptable danger to public assist for Australia’s inventive group and will undermine our purpose of bringing Australians collectively by way of artwork and creativity.
“Artistic Australia shall be reviewing the choice course of for the Venice Biennale 2026.”
The beautiful reversal in Sabsabi and Dagostino’s fortunes adopted on the heels of an article revealed in The Australian newspaper on Wednesday 12 February, which detailed Sabsabi’s “questionable and ambiguous utilization of Hassan Nasrallah, the lifeless Hezbollah chief” in considered one of his works.
Nasrallah was the secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political occasion and militia, from 1992 till his assassination in 2024.
Hezbollah has been designated as a terrorist organisation by 60 international locations together with the US and the members of the European Union.
“Nasrallah has appeared no less than twice in Sabsabi’s early oeuvre. In a single outstanding work, archived by the Museum of Modern Artwork [Australia], the late Hezbollah chief featured because the centrepiece of an elaborate video set up,” The Australian’s article mentioned.
“Within the blurb on its web site, the MCA wrote-up Sabsabi’s video set up by first describing Hezbollah as a ‘paramilitary and political organisation’, with out mentioning that its army wing was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in 2003, or that the Australian authorities upgraded that itemizing in 2021 to proscribe it fully,” the article continued.
The Australian went on to report the MCA’s description of Nasrallah’s face with “beams of sunshine that shine from his eyes and mouth, suggestive of a divine illumination”.
The Australian conceded it didn’t have details about why Sabsabi depicted Nasrallah in his work. Sabsabi is a conceptual artist, as he instructed the media when his choice was introduced final week.
Nonetheless, The Australian mentioned “we do understand how Sabsabi feels about Israel: he was considered one of a number of artists who boycotted the 2022 Sydney Competition after its organisers dedicated the grievous sin of accepting $20,000 in funding from the Israeli Embassy to pay for a manufacturing placed on by an invited Israeli choreographer”.
The Sabsabi/Dagostino blow-up prompted a query in Federal Parliament on Friday 14 February. Liberal Senator Claire Chandler requested Overseas Minister Senator Penny Wong about Sabsabi’s work, together with one piece displaying 9/11 imagery with the title Thank You Very A lot.
Senator Wong replied that she knew nothing of the works, and would take the query on discover and report again.
The debacle follows Australia’s triumphant participation in final 12 months’s Venice Biennale, wherein the Indigenous artist Archie Moore was awarded the Golden Lion for his genealogical work, kith & kin.
