This artist fled civil war, now he’ll represent Australia on the world stage

Khaled Sabsabi, a multimedia artist who migrated to Australia with his family from Lebanon during the civil war and has taken strong political positions on the Gaza conflict, has been selected as his adopted country’s next representative at the Venice Biennale.

Chosen by Creative Australia for the 2026 biennale, the biggest event in the global arts calendar, Sabsabi is the first Lebanese Australian artist selected.

Artist Khaled Sabsabi (right) with curator Michael Dagostino on Friday. Credit: Steven Siewert

His entry will be curated by Michael Dagostino, director of the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, who hopes the collaboration will build empathy, understanding and connection between people.

The announcement was made in Granville on Friday, not far from where Sabsabi’s family came to live on Good Street, running a video and music rental and sales shop specialising in Arabic music and film, one of only two such video shops in the region.

“That was my schooling at a young age listening to various thousands of different Arabic songs and that informed my aesthetic and visual language,” he said.

Sabsabi has big shoes to fill. Indigenous artist Archie Moore hand-chalked his vast family history for the Venice Biennale last year, only to make history himself and become the first Australian to snare a coveted Golden Lion award.

The full scale of Archie Moore’s “kith and kin” on the ceiling and interior walls of the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale last year.Credit: Andrea Rossetti

The biennale is held over seven months and comprises a curated main exhibition and a cluster of shows hosted by 87 countries in dedicated pavilions. Two Golden Lion awards are presented at each event.

Specifics of Sabsabi’s entry are under tight wraps, but will likely incorporate multimedia, music and film exploring themes of migration, cultural diversity, humanity, empathy, everyday spirituality and the “nuances of culture and politics”.

“It will be an inclusive place, that is our intent. It will be a place that brings people together. All I can say is it will be made in western Sydney, packed down and freighted across,” Sabsabi said.

Sabsabi was a product of hip-hop culture of the 1980s, a fan of Public Enemy and known by the moniker Peace Fender.

While no longer performing, “music and sound infuse my practise and the idea of collaging and stitching is part of the subculture and my way of being”.

Sabsabi joined a boycott of the 2022 Sydney Festival over its decision to accept $20,000 in funding from the Israeli embassy. But he has also protested against Islamic State’s destruction of sacred religious sites in a notable five-channel video work Bring the Silence (2018).

The violence and destruction in Gaza was “inhumane and unacceptable”, he said. “Having said that, I support peace, and the possibility of that dream. We need a way forward; this violence and destruction cannot be sustained.

“I’m a Lebanese Arab Muslim Australian. My identity is inseparable to what is happening to the region, it’s in my DNA and blood.

“I grew up as a child fleeing civil war and destruction, fleeing catastrophe to seek refuge, and I boycotted because I support the Palestinian people and their right to exist and coexist, and I also support the idea of the right of return.

“I have family intermarried with Palestinians here and in Lebanon, and I feel this opportunity is to reconsider these moments and look at a better future not just for the region but the broader world. I believe in peace and I believe in the process of democracy and the power of the people and their will to instill this change.

“Having said that I believe the people most directly affected are the ones that should lead that conversation of the right to coexist.”

As a child of 11 or 12, Sabsabi remembers the bombs and snipers during Lebanon’s civil war, and sheltering in basements of collapsed buildings.

His first work to enter a public institution, Aajyna, was based on the childhood memory of the glimpse of occasional dazzling light, during his hours and days in the bunkers.

Across 35 years, he has produced 65 major mixed media and installation-based works, shown in solo and group exhibitions.

Australia’s 43rd entry for La Biennale di Venezia spells the return of philanthropist Simon Mordant as a patron in a team led by Alexandra Dimos.

Mordant and the late Neil Balnaves withdrew financial support towards Australia’s participation at Venice in 2017 due to Creative Australia’s decision for in-house management.

Dagostino said the artwork would be about “humanity and empathy in this world”.

“Our intent as collaborators is to make something that considers all people and bring into a place where it will create an inclusive space,” Dagostino said.

“I see it as a nurturing space that fosters humanity. If we can all have that notion of empathy and shed misconceptions we are on the right footing.”

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