“Avoid”?

Wow, THAT was hopeful, wasn’t it? Not even a week after being picked as our man at next year’s Biennale, Khaled Sabsabi just got dropped:

It appears that Australia’s federal arts body Creative Australia, who picked Sabsabi alongside curator Michael Dagostino, have responded to political pressure to drop the artist. In a statement they said: “The board of Creative Australia has made the unanimous decision not to proceed with the artistic team chosen for the Venice Biennale 2026. 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.”
The decision comes after the issue made its way to the Australian Senate. During question time, Liberal senator Claire Chandler raised Sabsabi’s selection, saying: “With such appalling antisemitism in our country, why is the Albanese government allowing the person who highlights a terrorist leader in his artwork to represent Australia on the international stage?”

Yeah, this is some bullshit. I don’t know if Sabsabi’s art is any good or not, but this certainly feels like political considerations—and I’ve no doubt Sabsabi’s views about Palestinians (he’s in favour of them) are among them—have outweighed all others. The really bothering thing, of course, is that they’ve clearly taken this decision because of conservative political criticism, Murdoch media being as much of a political entity as the Coalition of course, and the latter are still in opposition. They’re not actually in power. I have a terrible feeling that will change in May when the election rolls around, but for now they’re out of power. And Creative Australia—the former Australia Council, and part of the government’s arts portfolio and, consequently, currently overseen by the ALP—appear to have caved into them anyway. I’ve seen quite a few folk posting about “complying in advance” online, warning against giving into fascism before Mushroom Cock or Edolf (depending on which one’s actually running the country at any given moment) (and yes, Edolf is a marvellous name I saw on Threads and need to use more) can even give the order to do the fascist thing. This feels a bit like that somehow. Like CA are expecting Dutton to win in May and they’re trying to get on his side early.

Anyway, whatever “divisive debate” they were trying to avoid doesn’t matter, cos the situation has already turned into a string of resignations and a staff walkout and what I presume is gloating by The Oz; I don’t know cos I haven’t found a way around their paywall and wouldn’t want to give them the clicks anyway. And CA is pretty badly damaged. Ugly all round.