Creative Australia, who facilitates Australia’s Venice Biennale pavilion, dropped artist Khaled Sabsabi due to past political works, prompting general outrage. The pavilion is now at risk of remaining empty. Artist Kirsha Kaechele steps in with a provocation.
“The Board of Creative Australia”, states a Press Release on the organization’s website published on 13th February 2025, “has made the unanimous decision not to proceed with the artistic team chosen for the Venice Biennale 2026”. The artistic team being artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino. Outrage was sparked among the national and international art community. Sabsabi, who had been officially announced just one week prior, is a politically engaged Australian artist, originally from Lebanon, from where he fled with his family in the late 1970s to escape the civil war that was taking place in his country of origin. His political engagement also seems to have had a central role in his exclusion from the 61st Venice Art Biennale.
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: “BECAUSE OF WHO I AM”
In hindsight, the artist’s comments after the announcement that he was selected now sound like a bitter prevision – “I was quite shocked,” he had said, “To tell you the truth, I have applied four times and I felt that, in this time and in this space, this wouldn’t happen because of who I am”. It seems like maybe his feeling wasn’t that wrong after all. The reason he was dropped by Creative Australia seems in fact to have much to do with who he is: an artist. On their website, the organization vaguely states that “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”, as a reason for dropping the team.
SABABI DROPPED: THE PREVIOUS WORK THAT SPARKED IT ALL
At first, it seemed like the reason behind Creative Australia’s decision was the artwork YOU, a 2007 multi-channel video and sound installation, shown in Sabsabi’s first solo exhibition as part of a two-piece installation – the second part was called TOO. In the video, as highlighted by an article on the Australian after the announcement of Sabsabi’s participation,Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah appeared. It should be noted, however, that Hezbollah was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Australian government in 2021, 14 years after the work was created. The article also called Sabsabi’s participation a “creative form of racism” referring to his origins. Indeed, the article and the discussion that followed, around the “Nasrallah” affair, could have explained the “prolonged and divisive debate” mentioned by Creative Australia.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH: SABSABI AND 9/11
Yet, during a hearing at the Senate, Creative Australia’s CEO Adrian Collette said that the decision was taken after the commission learnt about the existence of another work, titled Thank You Very Much, a montage of the 9/11 attacks, at the end of which the then US president George W. Bush is shown saying “Thank you very much”. Apparently, the artist and curator were given no opportunity to speak to the members of the board before the decision to drop them was finalised. They jointly commented about the outcome on social media, attacking the political nature of Creative Australia’s choice: “Art should not be censored as artists reflect the times they live in. We believe in the vision of artists for an inclusive future that can bring us together to communicate and progress our shared humanity. We also believe that, despite this decision, the Australian art world will not dim or be silent”.
SABSABI AND DAGOSTINO BREAK THEIR SILENCE
After days of silence, Sabsabi and curator Dagostino finally published a joint statement on the artist’s website. The two intend to participate in the Venice Biennale regardless and have started the process to set up an infrastructure to collect funds. “This project,” they say, building up on the wide public support received so far, “is about art, unity, and dialogue—a vision that challenges, inspires, and reflects the complexities of our world. We are determined to see it realised and need your support to make it happen. By supporting our commitment to present at the Venice Biennale, you are advocating for artistic freedom, and the capacity of artistic voices to strengthen cultural exchange”.
KAECHELE’S PROVOCATION “LADY’S LOUNGE AT BIENNALE, AN HONOR”
But the controversies around Australia’s pavilion at the 61st Art Biennale do not seem to stop – feeding international art press. Kirsha Kaechele stepped in. With a post on social media, the American artist and art curator, who now lives in Tasmania, shared a pretend Press Release thanking Creative Australia for the honour. Kaechele had previously been in the eye of the storm for her Ladies Lounge exhibition.
MEN BANNED: LADIES LOUNGE
Ladies Lounge first appeared at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art in 2024 as a women-only exhibition. Kaechele was brought to court by Jason Lau on anti-discrimination charges – to which she reacted saying she was “absolutely delighted”. Kaechele even turned her own testimony into a performance art piece, showing up with 25 other women in matching outfits, claiming that “women deserve both equal rights and special privileges (in the form of unequal rights, or chivalry) for a minimum of three hundred years”. After losing the trial, Kaechele finally won the appeal she filed to the Tasmania Supreme Court. It is not the first time Kaechele mentions the Biennale either. In a 2024 interview in The Sydney Morning Herald, she commented on the future of the artwork: “It is a living, evolving work of art, it may not live at Mona forever. It will travel. The Ladies Lounge could appear in any number of places – the Venice Biennale, the G5 summit, Davos. Anywhere women need a break from men, and anywhere men need the experience of being excluded”.
THE POLITICS OF ART: THE BIENNALE’S ROLE
Both cases, regarding the same pavilion, relate to the political role of the Biennale and can serve to raise a number of questions about the politics of art. If the role of art is to reflect the times we live in, should political expression be a limitation when it comes to selecting projects to be presented in institutional contexts? Should the fact that they represent a country be a variable in this choice? Whatever the answer may be, what surely stands out is the fact that Creative Australia’s retraction may have sparked the political debate around way art more than it sedated it. At the expenses of the public (who won’t be able to see Sabsabi’s work in the pavilions) and of Australia’s perceived role and credibility in the context of the Biennale. Perhaps, it is precisely these dynamics that much-criticised Kaechele was mocking.
LINK
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