Sydney artist Khaled Sabsabi dropped from Venice Biennale junket, not cancelled

The government hasn’t cancelled a Sydney artist - over works featuring a terrorist leader and a 9/11 video titled ‘Thank You Very Much’- it’s just cancelled his cheques, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Quake in your boots, Australia. The arts community is up in arms!

Surely it is only a matter of time before they storm the Bastille – and any drinks waiter on opening night will know what that feels like.

The cause of their revolutionary zeal this time around is the decision to  withdraw Sydney artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative at the Venice Biennale – the world’s most prestigious and pretentious arts festival.

The decision came after the emergence of two works by Sabsabi: one depicting Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah bathed in a seemingly heavenly light and another appearing to show George W. Bush saying “thank you very much” for terrorist planes flying into the World Trade Centre towers on September 11, 2001.

The latter was the tipping point for the government arts agency Creative Australia.

Sydney artist Khaled Sabsabi will no longer represent Australia at the Venice Biennale.

Lionising a Lebanese terrorist leader was apparently a coin toss but presenting as what one might politely call “al Qa’ida-adjacent” was a bridge – or two burning buildings – too far.

Naturally Sabsabi, his curator and supporters have cried cancel culture and censorship.

Five of the finalists who were beaten by Sabsabi to the plum gig released an open letter declaring it a violation of the “freedom of speech and moral courage that is at the core of arts in Australia”.

Sabsabi himself declared: “Art should not be censored”.

Hear, hear, my morally courageous friends!

This is the exact same principle I have been publicly and constantly championing for years – although I must admit I don’t remember getting a great deal of support from the arts community at the time.

Indeed, the whole scenario feels eerily familiar.

It was only a couple of years ago that the Sydney Festival was under pressure to cancel an artist in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

And that time it wasn’t even the artist’s work that was being criticised, merely their nationality.

Still, the core issue remained the same: they were receiving government funding, and that was deemed inappropriate.

And once more the “morally courageous” arts community of Australia rose up.

They were the ones demanding the cancellation.

Because this time it was an Israeli choreographer who had the misfortune to be financially supported by their government.

Khaled Sabsabi has declared: “Art should not be censored”.

The Israeli Embassy in Australia had donated a meagre $20,000 to the 2022 Sydney Festival to help cover the cost of staging a Sydney Dance Company performance by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin.

Now you couldn’t force me to watch a contemporary dance show even with a gun to my head – a tactic Hezbollah knows something about – but surely the SDC and Naharin have the right to freedom of expression.

But not according to more than 20 Australian artists and acts who decided to boycott the festival in protest.

And, you guessed it, Sabsabi was one of them.

“I’ve decided to withdraw from the Sydney Festival out of solidarity with the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“That’s how I feel about it. The ­Sydney Festival’s decision is their ­decision.”

What benefit Sabsabi’s solidarity has delivered the Palestinian people is debatable. Certainly things haven’t been going great for them lately.

But now that Creative Australia has decided to withdraw from Sabsabi’s junket to Venice, it appears it’s no longer that decisions are simply decisions. It’s an act of censorship!

Of course, the esoteric and oh-so-principled argument goes that it was never the art of the Israeli that was in question, just the appropriateness of the government funding.

But, as Scooby Doo would say, “Ruh-Roh!” That’s the only argument here too.

No one is banning Sabsabi from doing whatever he does, he just doesn’t get to have a taxpayer-funded representative role.

And that is because, you can bet Venice to a brick, he does not represent the taxpayers whose money is on the line. The government hasn’t cancelled him. It’s just cancelled his cheques.

But outrage is at its most visceral when money and morals collide, and artists are angry.

One, James Nguyen, responded by posting this penetrating insight about the Arts Minister on – of course – ­Instagram:

“TONY BURKE anagram for TURKEY NOB”

What amazing artistic creativity is on display in this country. What moral courage.

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Originally published as Sydney artist Khaled Sabsabi dropped from Venice Biennale junket, not cancelled