Australia’s plans for the next Venice Biennale lie in ruins, after the country's selected artist and curator were sensationally dumped in the wake of a severely critical newspaper article.
The Sydney-based multimedia artist Khaled Sabsabi was last week announced as the artist representing Australia in 2026.
Sabsabi’s long-term supporter and colleague Michael Dagostino—the director of Sydney University’s Chau Chak Wing Museum—was announced as the curator who would work alongside the artist for Venice.
At last week’s media announcement in the Sydney suburb of Granville where Lebanese-born Sabsabi grew up, Creative Australia's chief executive officer Adrian Collette said Sabsabi and Dagostino “continue a proud tradition of showcasing exceptional artistic talent at this important global arts event [the Venice Biennale]”.
But not quite a week later—on Thursday night, Sydney time—Creative Australia threw both its Venice selections overboard.
“The Board of Creative Australia has made the unanimous decision not to proceed with the artistic team chosen for the Venice Biennale 2026,” the statement said.
“Creative Australia is an advocate for freedom of artistic expression and is not an adjudicator on the interpretation of art. 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 will be reviewing the selection process for the Venice Biennale 2026.”
The stunning reversal in Sabsabi and Dagostino’s fortunes followed on the heels of an article published in The Australian newspaper on Wednesday 12 February, which detailed Sabsabi’s “questionable and ambiguous usage of Hassan Nasrallah, the dead Hezbollah leader” in one of his works.
Nasrallah was the secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militia, from 1992 until his assassination in 2024.
Hezbollah has been designated as a terrorist organisation by 60 countries including the US and the members of the European Union.
“Nasrallah has appeared at least twice in Sabsabi’s early oeuvre. In one prominent work, archived by the Museum of Contemporary Art [Australia], the late Hezbollah chief featured as the centrepiece of an elaborate video installation,” The Australian’s article said.
“In the blurb on its website, the MCA wrote-up Sabsabi’s video installation by first describing Hezbollah as a 'paramilitary and political organisation', without mentioning that its military wing was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in 2003, or that the Australian government upgraded that listing in 2021 to proscribe it entirely,” the article continued.
The Australian went on to report the MCA’s description of Nasrallah’s face with “beams of light that shine from his eyes and mouth, suggestive of a divine illumination”.
The Australian conceded it did not have information about why Sabsabi depicted Nasrallah in his work. Sabsabi is a conceptual artist, as he told the media when his selection was announced last week.
However, The Australian said “we do know how Sabsabi feels about Israel: he was one of several artists who boycotted the 2022 Sydney Festival after its organisers committed the grievous sin of accepting $20,000 in funding from the Israeli Embassy to pay for a production put on by an invited Israeli choreographer”.
The Sabsabi/Dagostino blow-up prompted a question in Federal Parliament on Friday 14 February. Liberal Senator Claire Chandler asked Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong about Sabsabi’s work, including one piece showing 9/11 imagery with the title Thank You Very Much.
Senator Wong replied that she knew nothing of the works, and would take the question on notice and report back.
The debacle follows Australia’s triumphant participation in last year’s Venice Biennale, in which the Indigenous artist Archie Moore was awarded the Golden Lion for his genealogical work, kith & kin.
