Khaled Sabsabi reinstated as Venice Biennale representative after independent review into dumping
Creative Australia has reinstated the artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s artistic team for the 2026 Venice Biennale after an independent external review of the decision.
The pair had been dumped from the prestigious art exhibition earlier this year after Creative Australia’s board took the unprecedented decision to revoke their appointment.
“Today, we were officially informed by Creative Australia that we have been recommissioned as the Artistic Team for the Australia Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale,” the team said in a statement on Wednesday.
“We accept this invitation and welcome the opportunity to represent our country on this prestigious international stage.” […]
The review, conducted by board advisory firm Blackhall & Pearl, found there was no single or predominant failure of process, governance or decision-making that resulted in the decision to rescind the selection.
“There were, however, a series of missteps, assumptions and missed
opportunities that meant neither the leadership of Creative Australia, nor the Board, were well placed to respond to, and manage in a considered way, any criticism or controversy that might emerge in relation to the selection decision.”
The inquiry concluded that there was no one at Creative Australia who was adequately prepared for a “potentially divisive controversy” around the appointment, but that failure was not the fault of any one person or group of individuals.
I don’t know, this nonsense feels like it had to have been someone‘s fault, cos obviously someone at CA decided the Biennale had to be protected from Sabsabi and the board of the organisation agreed with them… I accused them at the time of pre-emptively cowering before Dutton, who I frankly expected (as I presume CA also did) to win the election in May; I still feel now that it was mostly if not wholly down to Sabsabi’s support for Palestine, and that he still wouldn’t be going anywhere near Venice had Dutton in fact won the election; whoever he installed as arts minister in place of Tony Burke would have ensured this backdown never happened. Burke, incidentally, seems to be covering his own arse now:
In February Burke publicly expressed shock over two of Sabsabi’s past artworks mere hours before an emergency board meeting was held and the pair were unceremoniously dumped.
One was a 2006 work Thank You Very Much, which used archival footage of the 9/11 attacks alongside a clip of George W Bush, and which Sabsabi said was a “critique of the brutalisation and the savageness of war”. The other, You (2007), is held in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s collection and included footage of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declaring “divine victory” in an address after the 34-day Lebanon-Israel war. The artwork was made as the Lebanese-Australian artist grappled with the scale of destruction caused to his birth country.
Speaking on Wednesday after their reinstatement, Burke said “the works are quite explicable but at first glance both of them looked deeply offensive”.
He said there had been a failure of “due diligence” and he as minister should have been briefed about Sabsabi’s back catalogue so he could have defended him.
Well, as the minister, why didn’t Tony himself demand this information so he could be fully informed, instead of just going along with whatever CA decided? I don’t know what the answer to this bullshit was, but I’m fairly sure that wasn’t it. Anyway, it seems Sabsabi is off to Venice again (and so is the bloke who resigned as our ambassador to the Biennale over this whole thing), and the “divisive debate” CA singularly failed to avoid can die back down… at least until Murdoch media decides we need to get angry about him again…
