Monash University gives all clear to postponed exhibition featuring Sabsabi

Monash University’s Museum of Art has given the go-ahead to a postponed show featuring cancelled artist Khaled Sabsabi.

Controversial Lebanese-Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi

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Monash University’s Museum of Art will push ahead with a postponed exhibition featuring controversial artist Khaled Sabsabi, “following a period of community consultation’’.

In March, the university indefinitely postponed the group show, Stolon Press: Flat Earth, which includes works by Sabsabi. This followed the cancellation of the artist’s appointment as Australia’s official representative to the 2026 Venice Biennale by federal arts body Creative Australia.

The Venice cancellation enraged the arts community and was carried out after questions were raised in federal parliament about two past artworks by Sabsabi, a well-known Lebanese-Australian artist.

One of those works, YOU, depicted dead Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and was long described by Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art as “suggestive of a divine illumination”. The other work was a video installation titled Thank You Very Much which used footage of former US president George W. Bush and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Monash University confirmed the postponed exhibition, curated by Sydney publisher Stolon Press, would proceed from May 29, three weeks after it was originally scheduled to open.

A Monash spokesperson said: “The university concluded its engagement process with relevant staff and students, which has enabled us to consider a range of perspectives prior to the exhibition.’’

The spokesperson said the university’s consultations were designed to ensure “the exhibition proceeds in the manner and spirit originally curated by Stolon Press’’ and added: “Monash University is firmly committed to freedom of speech and academic freedom … These freedoms are balanced with our duty of care to the communities we serve.’’

For the exhibition, Sabsabi will use Lebanese coffee to paint the gallery’s walls with “spiritual” calligraphic designs that recall his childhood memories of living through Lebanon’s civil war.

The artist said he was “relieved that common sense has prevailed and we can move forward with the Flat Earth curatorial vision … It’s a clear sign that truth still matters.’’

He said the Monash show going ahead was “an opportunity for Creative Australia to revisit its decision regarding Venice 2026’’.

The artist has said: “I reject all forms of racism and hate.”