Cowardice is the milk that runs in the veins of many event organisers, especially when it comes to those occasions that might provoke the unmanaged unexpected. The same organisers will claim to be open minded, accommodating to stirring debate, and open to what is trendily termed in artistic lingo as “provocations”.
The dropping by Creative Australia of Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale, along with the curator of the pavilion’s artistic team, Michael Dagostino, shows that true artistic subversion is not the game, and uncontroversial subservience the form. If an arts body fears that the milch cow will be starved, if not killed altogether, they will slight, blight and drop the artist in question and prostrate before Mammon’s moneyed throne.
In Australia’s febrile, philistine and increasingly hysterical atmosphere on matters controversial, debate that supposedly tests what is tepidly termed social cohesion has been cut and mauled to the point of non-recognition. Journalists are given to following strict talking points on matters of international interest, from President Donald Trump (criticism of all his moves, marvellous) to the issue of Israel (criticism, not quite so marvellous, entailing avoidance of such words as “massacre”, “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”).
Criticism of Israel’s policies in levelling Gaza and creating an open-air theatre of massacre in real time have led agitating voices in both Israel and Australia to claim that the demon of antisemitism is more virulent than usual. Threats have been inflated and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, inspired to secure votes in the months leading up to the federal election. A pathology has taken root, from art circles to universities.
It began with an intervention by the Australian newspaper, an outlet that Israel can rely on as its pro bono propagandistic emissary down under. The paper’s sympathetic correspondent, Yoni Bashan, had been embedded with Israeli forces in Gaza. After receiving a number of messages, Bashan took an interest in Creative Australia’s choice for the biennale, thinking he had scored a coup by going through Sabsabi’s previous work. This preschool hackwork found a 2007 video installation titled You, which features Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of the Lebanese Shiite militia group Hezbollah.
Nasrallah, whose voice and image appears in the montage, was slain in the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The buffoonish, hatchet assessment (“I’m not an arts reporter,” Bashan conceded in a podcast, calling the art industry “a bit too fluty for me”) claimed that Creative Australia’s selection of Sabsabi was a “creative form of racism”. Instead of understanding the broader context of the horrors of war which Sabsabi has been preoccupied with, himself a refugee from the Lebanese civil war, the paper was thrilled to have uncovered a terrorist sympathiser.
The falsely revelatory nature of the Australian’s intervention, coupled with a discussion in the Australian Parliament that also scorned a 2006 video titled Thank you very much showing the 9/11 attacks and then US President George W. Bush, was pitifully juvenile. Tony Burke’s expression of shock was craven, a capitulation that necessitates his immediate resignation as Minister for the Arts. Within hours of the parliamentary exchange – one could hardly call it a debate – Creative Australia convened an emergency board meeting that unanimously endorsed cancelling the contract regarding the Venice Biennale representation featuring Sabsabi and Dagostino. It had taken all but six days from the announcement that praised the artist’s work for exploring “human collectiveness” and questioning “identity politics and ideology, inviting audiences to do the same.”
Thankfully, this indecent chapter did provoke resignations and stinging criticism. Mikala Tai, an important figure in Creative Australia’s visual arts departments over the last four years, wrote to Chief Executive Adrian Collette stating that she had resigned “in support of the artist.”
To the list of resignations can be added artist and board member, Lindy Lee and Simon Mordant, twice commissioner at the Venice Biennale, who told ABC Arts that he “immediately resigned” his role and terminated financial support. “There was a question asked in parliament [on Thursday, February 13] and that subsequently resulted in an unprecedented move by Creative Australia to rescind the contract.” For Mordant, he could not think of any other situation “in any country in the world” where something of this nature had happened, and “certainly” not in Australia.
To its credit, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), which accepted You and exhibited it in 2009, rightly wondered how the decision was reached. In a statement to the Australian Financial Review on February 21, the gallery expressed concern with “the lack of transparency in Creative Australia’s process.” The decision had “major ramifications for the arts in Australia and the reputation of Australia in the world at a time when creating space for diverse artist voices and ideas has never been more important.”
Other galleries have been committedly cowardly and silent on the decision, even those whose funding does not depend on Creative Australia. The Art Gallery of NSW, which ran Sabsabi’s solo show in 2019, is a case in point, merely stating that it was “not commenting on this matter at this time”. Liz Ann Macgregor, who ran the MCA for over two decades till 2021, offers a cast iron reason for the cringeworthy reticence. “I think people are second-guessing that they might upset some of their donors if they say something.”
The teams shortlisted to join the biennale pavilion were also keen to express their views in an open letter addressed to the Creative Australia board. “We believe that revoking support for the current Australian artist and curator representatives for Venice Biennale 2026 is antithetical to the goodwill and hard-fought artistic independence, freedom of speech and moral courage that is at the core of arts in Australia, which plays a crucial role in our thriving and democratic nation.”
The letter goes on to ask the salient question. “If Creative Australia cannot even stand by its expert-led selection for a matter of hours, abandoning its own process at the first sign of pressure, then what does that say about its commitment to artistic excellence and freedom of expression?” The answer: everything.
