Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art blames media for ‘Hezbollah rewrite’

Sydney’s MCA has dropped its own description of Khaled Sabsabi’s video installation of a Hezbollah leader as a work ‘suggestive of a divine illumination’.

Khaled Sabsabi’s work entitled YOU.

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Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art is no longer describing artist Khaled Sabsabi’s video installation of a Hezbollah leader as a work “suggestive of a divine ­illumination” – and has blamed the media for this move.

Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino were dumped as Australia’s representatives to the 2026 Venice Biennale after questions were raised in federal parliament about two past artworks by Sabsabi, a prominent Lebanese-Australian artist.

One of those works, titled YOU, is a video installation of dead Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Donated to the MCA in 2009, the multi-screen video was labelled for 15 years as a “purposefully ambiguous” work in which the artist “manipulated the video footage, obscuring Nasrallah’s face with beams of light that shine from his eyes and mouth, suggestive of a divine illumination’’.

The museum’s original catalogue entry also said the work “plays on Western fears of cultural difference, which seem in counterpoint to Nasrallah’s salutation (of peace)’’.

Those references have now been deleted from the work’s online catalogue entry.

The text was rewritten on February 27, several weeks after federal arts body Creative Australia announced it was revoking Sabsabi’s and Dagostino’s Venice appointment – a decision that provoked fury in the arts world.

An MCA spokeswoman said the museum had rewritten YOU’s catalogue entry because of distorted media reporting of the work. She said: “The original catalogue entry on Sabsabi’s work was written over 15 years ago. In light of the misinterpretation of the work in the press, the MCA considered it their responsibility to ensure greater clarity in the ­description of the work and its context.’’

Sabsabi with his works at Mosman Art Gallery in Sydney.

She confirmed “the artist was consulted on the updated text’’.

The new catalogue entry on the MCA’s website does not mention the beams of light emanating from Nasrallah’s face, or liken them to a “divine illumination”. Nor does it say the work is “purposefully ambiguous” or that it “plays on Western fears of cultural difference”.

Instead, the MCA’s new entry says YOU “is not currently on display” and is largely about war and media power.

It says: “With YOU, Sabsabi looks to draw attention to the brutality of war and of the media-controlled image in the service of ideology-driven propaganda.’’

The new text retains the earlier assertion that YOU deals with the media’s ability to “vilify or deify”. It continues to describe Hezbollah as a “para­military and political organis­ation”, but acknowledges “the Australian government listed the entirety of Hezbollah as a proscribed terrorist organisation in 2021’’.

This week, in media interviews, Sabsabi accused Creative Australia of “dismantling” his career: last week, Monash University indefinitely postponed an exhibition featuring the artist’s work. “Nobody should have to go through this torture,” he told The Guardian.

“It’s unfair … and those people that made that decision … essentially gave the go-ahead to define me as somebody who I am not.’’

He maintained his past works had been “weaponised” and has called for his Biennale appointment to be reinstated.

When asked if it would support that, the MCA did not respond.

The second Sabsabi art work linked to his Venice cancellation was a video work entitled Thank You Very Much, which uses footage of al-Qa’ida’s 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre twin towers and US president George W. Bush saying “Thank you very much”.

In February in the Senate, Liberal Claire Chandler asked why a person “who highlights a terrorist leader in his artwork” was representing Australia “on the inter­national stage’’?

Arts Minister Tony Burke said he was “shocked” when he found out about the two contentious Sabsabi works but denied direct involvement in Creative Australia’s decision to revoke the Venice appointment. Creative Australia’s Venice selection process is now the subject of a review.

While the cancellation led to claims of artistic censorship by Creative Australia, Sabsabi was among artists demanding that Israeli artist Ruth Patir be cancelled from the 2024 Venice Biennale. He also boycotted the 2022 Sydney Festival because the festival accepted a $20,000 grant from the Israeli government for a Sydney Dance Company production.

Sabsabi did not respond to The Australian’s request for comment about the revised YOU text.