Australia’s decision to drop Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi as its representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale has triggered an uproar culminating in a string of resignations and petitions signed by hundreds.
Creative Australia, the country’s governing arts body, announced yesterday, February 13, that it had rescinded last week’s appointment of Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as the pavilion’s artistic team. The decision followed an article in the newspaper the Australian and a parliament discussion that scrutinized some of Sabsabi’s previous work featuring reappropriated footage of the recently assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the 9/11 attacks.
Today, several senior officials and staff members at Creative Australia said they resigned in response to the board’s decision. Mikala Tai, who helmed the organization’s visual arts department in the past four years, told the Guardian that she had submitted a letter of resignation to Chief Executive Adrian Collette “in support of the artist.” She was joined by program manager Tahmina Maskinyar, who criticized Creative Australia’s lack of “due diligence” and told the Guardian she was “deeply disheartened that at no point was the artist’s voice taken into consideration” throughout the decision process. The UK news outlet also reported that former Venice Biennale commissioner, Australian investment banker Simon Mordant, has resigned as an international ambassador for the event and pulled his financial pledge from the pavilion in support of Sabsabi.
“It is a very dark day for Australia and the arts,” he said, also proposing to leave the country’s pavilion empty in solidarity with Sabsabi.
Creative Australia declined to provide any further comment.
In addition to the resignations, the shortlisted artistic teams for the 2026 biennale pavilion released a letter urging for the reinstatement of Sabsabi and Dagostino. Addressed to the Creative Australia board, the missive called attention to the “rigorous and professionally independent open-call process” by which Sabsabi and Dagostino were selected. They added that the same process led to the appointment of Bigambul-Kamilaroi artist Archie Moore and curator Ellie Buttrose, who were the first Australian team to win the Golden Lion award for their presentation kith and kin in last year’s biennale.
“We believe that revoking support for the current Australian artist and curator representatives for Venice Biennale 2026 is antithetical to the goodwill and hard-fought artistic independence, freedom of speech and moral courage that is at the core of arts in Australia, which plays a crucial role in our thriving and democratic nation,” reads the open letter, which was posted on Instagram.
This letter was joined by another signed, as of this writing, by over 800 artists, cultural workers, writers, and educators. Published in the Melbourne-based art criticism platform Memo Review, the second missive echoed calls to reappoint Sabsabi and Dagostino and accused Creative Australia of “artistic censorship.”
“If Creative Australia cannot even stand by its expert-led selection for a matter of hours, abandoning its own process at the first sign of pressure, then what does that say about its commitment to artistic excellence and freedom of expression?” the letter reads.
