Khaled Sabsabi could be excused for feeling a little daunted about the opening of his latest installation.
The Lebanese Australian artist brings conference of one’s self to the Australia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, two years after Kamilaroi Bigambul artist Archie Moore won the art event’s top prize, the Golden Lion for best national pavilion.
This year, no best artist or best national pavilion prizes will be awarded after the jury unanimously resigned in late April. (Supplied: Andrea Rossetti)
He also arrives in Venice after being controversially appointed, sacked, then reinstated to represent Australia at the biennale.
“My [art] practice has always been about making,” he says.
“As artists it’s about making; how it’s exhibited, where it’s exhibited becomes a secondary thing.”
That rocky road to Venice led Sabsabi to make history. He’s the only Australian artist, and one of only three artists in the event’s 131-year history, to present work in both a national pavilion and the biennale’s main exhibition, this year titled In Minor Keys and curated by the late Cameroon-born, Swiss-based art curator Koyo Kouoh.
There, Sabsabi presents an immersive installation, khalil, in the Arsenale, the sprawling warehouses that once housed the munitions of Venice’s powerful navy.
“For me it’s a testament to Australian art and Australian artists, which is really important, following on from Archie,” Sabsabi says.
How Sabsabi came to find himself in Venice in such special circumstances can be traced back to a tumultuous week in February 2025.
The week began with the announcement Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino had been selected to represent Australia, and ended with the board of Creative Australia rescinding their appointments after a late-night crisis meeting described as “fraught and heartbreaking” by artist Lindy Lee, who also resigned from the board in response.
Although the machinations behind Creative Australia’s decision to terminate Sabsabi’s appointment remain largely obscured from public view, its origins are in a short exchange between Tasmanian Liberal senator and opposition arts spokesperson Claire Chandler and then-acting Prime Minister Penny Wong on the floor of the federal Senate during Question Time.
Dropped artist Sabsabi speaks out
Hoping to score political points from the government over an issue of her own making, Chandler inferred Sabsabi’s appointment, based on her reading of You 2007, a work that has been in the collection of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) without controversy since 2009, risked exacerbating “appalling anti-Semitism” in Australia.
Chandler’s inference set off a chain of events that saw federal Arts Minister Tony Burke put in a call to Creative Australia chair Adrian Collette, who shortly afterward assembled the board for the emergency meeting. On February 13, Creative Australia’s board announced it had unanimously voted not to proceed with Sabsabi’s appointment citing it would cause a “prolonged and divisive debate about the 2026 selection outcome” that posed “an unacceptable risk” to public support for Australia’s artistic community.
In the maelstrom that ensued, Sabsabi returned to his art.
Listen to Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino on The Radio National Hour
“Khaled was determined to make the work; we just knew we were going to show it in Venice,” Dagostino says.
While the prospect the doors of the Australia Pavilion might remain closed in 2026 remained a very real possibility, Sabsabi got to work in fellow Australian artist Abdul Abdullah’s studio in Bangkok. It’s here both works for the Venice Biennale were produced.
First came khalil, the work originally planned for the national pavilion, a 40-metre-long painting covered in a dense forest of interwoven, gnarled lines interspersed with figurative elements applied with a painterly wash of subdued blue and purple hues.
Among the sometimes frenetic brush marks is a scattering of discernible objects and images and the occasional face, some appearing to be in a state of anguish.
Khalil forms part of the major biennale exhibition In Minor Keys, which Dagostino tells ABC Arts is about “the space in between”. (Supplied: Milani Gallery/Khaled Sabsabi)
While the painting alone gives an impression of the cacophony of noise, emotions and torment Sabsabi may have endured during its making, in the finished work the painting and its details are obscured by a 64-minute video layer of abstract figures and forms superimposed over the top.
“When I painted khalil, it didn’t have a home. It’s important to acknowledge that,” Sabsabi explains.
After it was completed, conference of one’s self, the work that now inhabits the Australia Pavilion, appeared “in a vision, in a dream”.
In March 2025 curator Koyo Kouoh reached out to discuss Sabsabi’s possible participation in In Minor Keys. A few months later it was confirmed.
Before her death from cancer at age 57 in May 2025, Kouoh allotted Sabsabi’s khalil arguably one of the most prominent spaces in the Arsenale complex; it’s the first work visitors encounter from the main entrance.
In the vastness of the Arsenale, khalil holds its own. The canvas screens that have been unfurled around the space are in perfect proportion to the sturdy brick columns that buttress the roof of the ancient warehouse.
Upon entering, visitors are invited to step inside the illuminated canvas spiral that greets them — and by and large almost every visitor does so. Stand too close to the canvas and you are in the projection itself; it’s at that point many visitors take selfies and portraits as frenetic lines and constantly evolving video forms dance across their faces.
Khaled Sabsabi to take two installations to Venice
A week after Kouoh died, Creative Australia reinstated Sabsabi following an independent review that revealed the organisation lacked basic risk management and crisis-handling procedures.
In the organisation’s stunning about-face it was “fortunate that Khaled had the opportunity of creating those eight extra panels”, Dagostino says.
Conference of one’s self is based on a 12th-century text, The Conference of the Birds by Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar, an important text for Sufi Muslims. In the poem a delegation of birds embark on a quest through seven earthly realms in search of the Simorgh (the Persian equivalent to a phoenix) who they believe can bring order to their world. In the absence of the Simorgh, the birds come to the realisation they must rule themselves.
In conference of one’s self Sabsabi has added an eighth realm, through an eighth panel to the work, to represent the self.
“Creating and making is interconnected with my spirituality, but also my faith as well,” Sabsabi, who is a practising Sufi Muslim, says.
Inside the pavilion, the eight painted panels form a hexagon suspended just above the ground in the centre of the space. To engage with the work visitors enter through one of two “thresholds” adorned with door hangings inspired by sacred ceremonial banners used by Sufi, Suni and Shia communities and hand-stitched by a women’s group in Parramatta.
The soundscape for conference of one’s self was created from a recording made by Sabsabi in western Sydney. (Supplied: Milani Gallery/Andrea Rossetti)
They then journey around the eight panels, back to where they started. Around the walls are a series of Islamic texts Sabsabi has chosen.
More so than in khalil, in conference of one’s self the artist’s signature is obscured by its final presentation. Sabsabi’s line work is less frenetic, the patterns more abstract; experienced en masse the work resembles the highly decorated interiors of a mosque, temple, shrine or other sacred space. The work successfully draws on those references to offer up a similar singular experience.
Conference of one’s self reads like an allegory for the journey Sabsabi and his supporters have endured on his journey to Venice. Although through religion, ritual and even art it is possible to conceive of the divine, and momentarily observe something greater than ourselves, in this mortal realm at least, there is only one’s self.
The Venice Biennale runs until November 22.