After a year marked by controversy and unexpected turns, Lebanese Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi is preparing to showcase not one, but two installations at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The artist, who was initially removed and then reinstated as Australia’s representative, will exhibit in both the Australia Pavilion and the Biennale’s main exhibition, a historic first for an Australian artist.
The journey to Venice has been anything but smooth for Sabsabi. In February 2025, he and curator Michael Dagostino were announced as the team representing Australia, poised to follow in the footsteps of Archie Moore, whose 2024 installation earned the prestigious Golden Lion. However, less than a week later, Creative Australia retracted the invitation, citing concerns over a “prolonged and divisive debate” stemming from questions about Sabsabi’s work from nearly two decades prior.
The decision sparked widespread criticism within the Australian arts community, with many decrying it as censorship. Following an independent review, Sabsabi and Dagostino were reinstated in July, a resolution they described as offering “a sense of resolution and allows us to move forward with optimism and hope after a period of significant personal and collective hardship.”
Despite the turmoil, Sabsabi remained committed to his artistic vision. “The aim was always to make the work; how it will manifest and where it will be shown can all fall into place if it’s meant to be,” Sabsabi told ABC Arts. “As an artist, as a maker, that’s what I do. That is my voice. That’s the platform that I use.”
The invitation to exhibit in the main Biennale exhibition came from the late Koyo Kouoh, the Cameroonian Swiss curator, after Sabsabi’s initial removal. Kouoh’s exhibition, titled “In Minor Keys,” explores themes of conversation and the spaces in between. Dagostino explained that including Sabsabi’s work within this framework “invokes that conversation a little bit further.”
Sabsabi’s installations draw heavily from his devotion to Tasawwuf, or Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. He describes Tasawwuf as a philosophy centered on detaching from the ego to connect with a broader sense of humanity and the universe. “It’s this idea of something that is much broader than you; to have that connection with the unimagined or uncomprehendable,” Sabsabi explained.
The installation in the Australia Pavilion, titled “conference of one’s self,” is inspired by the 12th-century Persian poem “The Conference of the Birds” by Farid al-Din Attar. The poem tells the story of birds seeking their leader, the Simorgh, and realizing in the end that they themselves *are* the Simorgh. Sabsabi adds an eighth “valley” to the poem’s seven, representing “completeness or wholeness.” He sees the work as a reflection on shared humanity, stating, “We’re one species, we’ve survived on collective learning and collective acknowledgement of each other.”
The project has involved a collaborative spirit, with Sabsabi working with artist Abdul Abdullah in Thailand to create one component of the installation, and with his local community in Western Sydney on another. Dagostino emphasized the importance of this collaborative approach, stating, “This opportunity for underrepresented voices to be included in an international conversation is what we’ve been about and we’ll continue to be about.”
Sabsabi’s experience echoes a recent pattern of controversies within the arts world, including the collapse of Adelaide Writers’ Week following the removal of Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah, and similar issues at the Bendigo Writers Festival. Internationally, South African artist Gabrielle Goliath faced a similar situation, with her Biennale presentation cancelled by the country’s culture minister.
Looking ahead, Sabsabi and Dagostino plan to bring both Biennale installations to the Samstag Museum of Art in Adelaide in March 2027, following an exhibition already planned and funded by a $100,000 Creative Australia grant awarded in October. “You can’t wait to bring the works back to Australia and have that opportunity for those that can’t physically get to Venice,” Sabsabi said.
The artist and curator each collected a stone from outside the Australia Pavilion during previous visits – Sabsabi during Moore’s 2024 exhibition, and Dagostino during the Venice Architecture Biennale – as a symbolic gesture of return. “You take a stone and it makes you return to the place,” Dagostino explained. “It’s a promise,” Sabsabi added, a sentiment that encapsulates the hope and resilience that have defined their journey to the Venice Biennale.
