It’s a familiar case of taxpayer-funded double standards. But first some background.
In February, a group of artists published a letter written to the chief executive, Adrian Collette, and the board of Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council). CA has a staff of 150 and in the past financial year received $289m from the federal government.
All of the signatories have represented Australia at the Venice Biennale. They are protesting (“strongly”, of course) against CA’s decision to remove artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino “as the artistic team for the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026” and “urge” their reinstatement.
The open letter said CA’s decision to remove Sabsabi and Dagostino “signals a fundamental disregard for the role of artists in our society – especially by the very institution meant to defend them”.
This is a statement of the view held by many who belong to the left intelligentsia and self-identify as progressive – that artists possess a higher morality than the mere mortals in their midst.
This entitles them to be supported by the taxpayer irrespective of what they say or do.
Much of the controversy has been reported in this paper’s Margin Call column.
As Yoni Bashan argued recently, the problem arose because of the failure of CA to perform due diligence with respect to the applicants.
At issue were two pieces by Sabsabi, the Australian artist of Lebanese descent who came to Australia in 1978 and settled with his family in western Sydney.
It was around the time that Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition government introduced what was called the “Lebanese concession”.
Those departing Lebanon were not refugees in the accepted sense of the term since they were not fleeing persecution but, rather, a civil conflict essentially between Lebanese Christians and Muslims.
Fraser’s scheme was abandoned not long after it was introduced. It was poorly implemented but indicated a generous spirit by the federal government at the time.
As the Encyclopaedia Britannica documents about the civil war that began in 1975, “Lebanon’s Muslims and leftists supported the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation led by Yasser Arafat) and sought more political power; its Christians, seeking to maintain their political dominance, opposed the PLO.”
It appears that CA was not aware of Sabsabi’s work titled ‘Thank You Very Much’. It is a video showing scenes of al-Qa’ida’s attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre twin towers on 9/11 (September 11, 2001).
After the death and destruction of men and women of all faiths and none, US president George W. Bush is shown clapping his hands and saying, “Thank you very much”.
And in 2007 Sabsabi produced the video ‘You’. It depicted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (1960-2024) reciting the words “O most honourable, pure and generous people, may God’s peace, mercy and blessings be upon you”.
These words were used by Nasrallah at the end of Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel that Hezbollah had initiated.
As Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art describes it, ‘You’ “plays on Western fears of cultural difference, which seem in counterpoint to Nasrallah’s salutations”. You get the picture.
Both ‘Thank You Very Much’ and ‘You’ were shown on Sky News’ The Media Show on February 21.
The left-wing-dominated artistic group is very protective of its own. But it’s understandable why CA decided to reassess its decision about Australia’s representative for the Venice Biennale. After all, CA is taxpayer funded and understandably wants to avoid reputational damage.
It is unreasonable for the Australian artistic community to expect that CA should have Australia’s contribution to the Venice Biennale represented by an artist whose past work about al-Qa’ida and Hezbollah is, at the very least, ambiguous. Especially in view of the rise of anti-Semitism in Western nations during recent times.
Some ABC journalists have been busy giving soft interviews to Sabsabi’s supporters.
ABC Radio National Breakfast presenter Sally Sara interviewed artist Ben Quilty on February 20. He declared that Sabsabi “is collateral damage for this seething fury in the community at the moment which is totally out of control”. Whatever that might mean.
Then, on February 24, Sara spoke to artist Judy Watson. Sara pointed out that the controversy began “after a senator used question time to highlight some of Sabsabi’s previous work”.
The reference was to Liberal Party senator Claire Chandler.
Watson soon threw the switch to Hitler and referred to “the so-called degenerate art that Hitler and some of the Nazis opposed” in 1937. This is absolute tosh.
There is no evident mood to censor Sabsabi’s work. But there is opposition to the use of taxpayer funds to have the artist represent Australia at an important international festival.
It’s something that the mostly taxpayer-subsidised arts community appears not to understand.
And then there is the matter of double standards.
As Margin Call has pointed out on February 11, Sabsabi was one of several artists who boycotted the 2022 Sydney Festival (well before Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023). He objected to the organisers accepting a $20,000 grant from Israel’s embassy in Australia to support an event produced by an Israeli choreographer. Really.
And there’s more. Sabsabi is one of 24,076 artists (so far) who have signed a petition calling for “the exclusion of Israel from the Venice Biennale”. It’s called the Art Not Genocide Alliance. The signatories condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
But Sabsabi and his fellow comrades have nothing hostile to say about Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7 and the murders, rapes and kidnappings of Israelis that followed.
It’s still open for Australia to send another artist to Venice in 2026. But Sabsabi and his lot maintain that no Israeli artists (however left-wing) should make it to the Biennale then.
For too long artists have demanded a freedom of expression that they do not return to those they oppose.
It’s a bit like writers festivals in Australia and elsewhere that I frequently comment on. They are often taxpayer-funded stacks that exhibit tolerance to those who support them and intolerance to those who oppose them. Just like Sabsabi.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
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