Sabsabi selection for the 2026 showcase had caused controversy due to some of the artist’s previous works, including a 2007 depiction of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated last year, and a 2006 video rendering of the 9/11 attacks called Thank You Very Much.
It appears that Australia’s federal arts body Creative Australia, who picked Sabsabi alongside curator Michael Dagostino, have responded to political pressure to drop the artist.
During question time, Liberal senator Claire Chandler raised Sabsabi’s selection, saying: “With such appalling antisemitism in our country, why is the Albanese government allowing the person who highlights a terrorist leader in his artwork to represent Australia on the international stage?”.
It plays on western fears of cultural difference … and suggests the all-pervasiveness of the public news media, and its ability to deify or vilify through the intensive repetition of imagery on our television screens.” The title Thank You Very Much also plays with ambiguity: the work includes a clip of George W Bush, US president during the attacks, saying the phrase during a press conference.
Khaled Sabsabi, the western Sydney artist who fled Lebanon’s civil war as a child, has been dropped from representing Australia at the 61st Venice Biennale – just five days after being selected to do so.
