Khaled Sabsabi Speaks of ‘Dismantled’ Career: ‘Nobody Should Have to Go Through This’

News / Biennials and Triennials Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino to Realise Australian Pavilion After All Elaine YJ Zheng

Khaled Sabsabi‘s removal from Australia’s Venice Biennale Pavilion has had a tortuous impact on his life, affecting his family, friends, and career.

That’s according to a recent interview where the former Australian Pavilion nominee told The Guardian that Creative Australia’s decision to rescind his appointment is ‘dismantling’ his career.

‘Nobody should have to go through this torture,’ Sabsabi told The Guardian‘s Nour Haydar, after a second Australian institution cancelled an exhibition featuring his work last week.

Melbourne‘s Monash University indefinitely postponed a Flat Earth, an exhibition including Sabsabi’s work last month which aimed to showcase ‘lesser-known aspects’ of the Lebanon-born, Sydney-based artist’s practice, including calligraphic paintings rooted in Sufism and works exploring spirituality through numerology and repetition.

Monash University did not cite controversial interpretations of Sabsabi’s past work—including references to Hezbollah and 9/11—that led the federal commissioning body to reverse his nomination, only stating their decision follows ‘consultation with [their] communities’.

Sabsabi was nominated alongside curator Michael Dagostino to represent Australia in early February, before Creative Australia abruptly reversed its decision after a senator flagged the artist’s 2006 work, Thank You Very Much, a video including images of 9/11 and a clip of George Bush saying the titular words.

Sabsabi told The Guardian that his work had been ‘misrepresented’, stressing that he does ‘not support or endorse any form of terrorism, racism, antisemitism, or Islamophobia’.

He explained that Thank You Very Much was made in the context of the United States’ war in Iraq and is a ‘critique of the brutalisation and savageness of war’.

He said the work explores ‘how media can be used as a form of propaganda’, changing ‘the way we see the world’ and ‘stereotype Muslims’.

Now, Sabsabi and Dagostino have launched an online campaign fundraising to independently present their cancelled exhibition.

While details remain unspecified, they confirmed the work will be ‘inclusive yet urgent’, addressing ‘themes of identity, migration, and resilience’ and aim to ’[bring] people together through dialogue’.

Under the original agreement, Creative Australia was responsible for the Pavilion’s production costs and the artist’s and curator’s travel expenses.

According to The Guardian, Creative Australia has already paid Sabsabi and Dagostino 90 percent of their contracted 100,000 AUD artist fee and 50,000 AUD curator fee. —[O]