Today, the Board of Creative Australia announced that Khaled Sabsabi would no longer represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2026. It was only a week ago that he was offered the opportunity.
This is the most shameful act of political intervention in the arts that I have witnessed. Max Delany, one of the most distinguished curators in Australia, described this as an: “egregious example of our public institutions and politicians, submitting to the misinformation, cancel culture and ideological campaigning of the lobby groups and Murdoch media.”
The opportunity to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale is the highest honour that any visual artist can receive from Creative Australia. Having the opportunity to create work for the Australian pavilion in Venice ensures global exposure.
The application process is complex and rigorous. Artistic applications are judged by the weight of their past work, the originality of a proposal, and the strength of their curatorial team that will realise the project. The applications are reviewed and evaluated by an expert panel. The panel comprises artists, museum directors, curators and scholars.
I have sat on a previous panel. The discussions are robust and comprehensive. Such an important decision is not made carelessly. The nomination is then presented to the Board of Creative Australia.
Creative Australia is the peak funding body for the arts in Australia. The Board includes a wide range of representatives in different fields. They do not have comparable experience as the advisory panel. They approved the nomination to appoint Khaled Sabsabi, but a week later,r they reversed their decision. This bizarre backflip has never happened before. The ‘shocked’ reactions by politicians raise questions about their capacity to open up sensitive issues and examine them with the necessary nuance.
I do not know Khaled Sabsabi. We have mutual friends, and they all tell me that he is a man of goodwill. He was born in Lebanon. His family fled the civil war. His artwork has been dedicated to exploring the issues of migration, confronting the horror of war, and debunking racial stereotypes. He has done all this with the goal of peace and tolerance. In 2011, he was awarded the Blake Prize. The Blake Prize was established to encourage artists to explore spirituality. He was a worthy winner, and his work has been collected by major galleries. To be stripped of the opportunity to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale would be a horrendous humiliation.
However, the shame now spreads outwardly. It brings into disrepute the whole process of governance and expert evaluation in Creative Australia. How can anyone have faith in the integrity of this process? The immediate expression of shame against Creative Australia and solidarity towards Khaled Sabsabi by prominent figures in the Australian art world has now cast a dark shadow over the whole process.
Simon Mordant, twice a commissioner of the Australian pavilion for the Venice Biennale and who led the campaign to rebuild the pavilion, and one of the most influential people in the art world, has announced that he has immediately resigned his ambassadorial role and withdrawn his funding pledge for Creative Australia. Many artists are saying that the pavilion should now remain empty.
I want to think that philanthropists such as Simon Mordant will enable Khaled Sabsabi to realise his project ‘off-site’. I would also like to think that there is a profound sense of collective shame over this whole process. However, the Venice pavilion is also a prime piece of real estate. It occupies an excellent position, near the major sites and has a rare water view.
Milan Kundera, in his masterful takedown of totalitarian culture, ruminated on the link between the theological debates on whether God shits, the desire for politicians to smile before the camera, and the popular styles of interior design– the thing they all had in common was kitsch. All the other artists who were shortlisted to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale have declared that Khaled Sabsabi should be reinstated. If they will not replace him, then who or what will fill the space? Perhaps leaving the pavilion empty is all that is left.
Prof. Nikos Papastergiadis is a renowned cultural historian and author of many books; his most recent is ‘John Berger and Me’.
