Australia’s presentation at the Venice Biennale in May will be a “nurturing experience” designed to bring people together – in the aftermath one of the most turbulent and divisive periods in the country’s 72-year history at the prestigious international art festival.
Artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino, who were controversially dumped and then reinstated as Australia’s representatives, will present not one but two major works at the Venice Biennale in May – both informed by Sabsabi’s practice as a Sufi Muslim and exploring “spirituality, migration, and the vastness of shared humanity”.
In the Australia Pavilion – the country’s official national outpost – the artist-curator team will present a work titled conference of one’s self, which Sabsabi describes as a multisensory “invitation for all people, regardless of faith, ethnic, ethnicity, religion” to “come together to contemplate our collective humanity”.
The pair will also present a crowdfunded version of their original Venice Biennale proposal – but within the Biennale’s main exhibition, curated by its late artistic director Koyo Kouoh. Kouoh, who died in May, invited Sabsabi and Dagostino to be part of her exhibition after Creative Australia rescinded their appointment.
It’s the first time an Australian artist has presented simultaneously in the Australia Pavilion and in the main exhibition. Australia’s most recent representative Archie Moore won the prestigious Golden Lion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, for his installation kith and kin.
While the details of both Sabsabi works are being kept under wraps for now, the artist has said they are closely connected, and inspired by the 12th-century Tasawwuf allegorical poem The Conference of the Birds, about the quest for spiritual enlightenment.
For the last 15 or so years Sabsabi’s work has been heavily influenced by Sufism or Tasawwuf, a mystical and pluralist strand of Islam that focuses on personal connection with the divine.
Together, the two works also reflect the core Tasawwuf concept of the interconnected inner and outer self. “[They’re] looking at the ideas of the inner and the outer, the zahir and batin, the seen and unseen; what we can touch [and] what we can imagine,” Sabsabi said.
The Pavilion work will feature audio and visual components, including “moments that rely on light to shimmer off and bounce and refract within the space to reveal other components of the work,” the artist said.
Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette, who came under fire over the initial decision to rescind the pair’s appointment, said the organisation was “proud” to present Sabsabi at the biennale.
“Sabsabi’s work offers a timely and critical opportunity to showcase an optimistic vision of Australian identity on the world stage,” he wrote in an official statement accompanying the announcement on Wednesday evening.
The first details for Australia’s Venice Biennale presentation have been revealed a little more than a year after Creative Australia revoked the original commission, following criticism of Sabsabi’s appointment in the Australian newspaper and debate in the senate about two of his earlier artworks, which Liberal senator Claire Chandler claimed promoted terrorism and antisemitism.
The sacking of Sabsabi, which Creative Australia described as an attempt to avoid “divisive debate”, prompted resignations within the organisation and triggered a backlash from the arts community.
Sabsabi told Guardian at the time that the experience had taken a toll on his physical and emotional wellbeing, and that it amounted to a “dismantling” of his career.
In July, Creative Australia reinstated Sabsabi and Dagostino, following an independent review that identified “missteps” in its decision. At the time, Creative Australia chair Wesley Enoch apologised to the artist and curator for the “hurt and pain” caused by the affair, acknowledging that Sabsabi’s work had been “mischaracterised”.
Asked if their sacking had changed their plans for the Biennale, Dagostino said it hadn’t: “The original intent has not changed. The work has grown, as [all] works grow, but it hasn’t changed that much. It’s just evolved in a very natural way.”
Sabsabi moved to western Sydney from Tripoli when he was 12, and his traumatic experience of Lebanon’s civil war and his experiences as a migrant and Muslim have informed his 35-year art practice, generating multimedia works that reflect on the destruction of war, challenge stereotypes, and provide windows into the experiences of Muslims living in Australia.
While Sabsabi’s Venice Biennale works are influenced by his own spiritual practice, he says they are “about respect and acknowledgment of all faiths, and finding commonality”.
“It’s an invitation for all people, regardless of faith, ethnic, ethnicity, religion, to come in and have these moments of reflection,” he said. “And I hope that they walk away with some curiosity.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
