Would Sidney Nolan be cancelled for painting Ned Kelly today? That’s what Creative Australia has done to Khaled Sabsabi
- Written by Ella Barclay, Senior Lecturer, School of Art and Design, Australian National University
Despite the perceived outrage at Khaled Sabsabi’s depiction of Hassan Nasrallah in his 2007 work You, Australian art has long made subjects of outlaws and questionable figures. And it is all the richer for it.
On Thursday, Shadow Arts Minister and self-described defender of free speech Claire Chandler asked Senator Penny Wong:
Why is the Albanese government allowing a person who highlights a terrorist leader in his artwork to represent Australia on the international stage at the Venice Biennale?
Without seeing the work, Senator Wong said
I agree with you that any glorification of the Hezbollah leader Nasrallah is inappropriate.
This was followed by disapproval from Arts Minister Tony Burke. Within 24 hours, Creative Australia’s board announced Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino, the nominated artistic team for the Australian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, had been scratched.
The news sparked shock resignations at Creative Australia, private funding retractions and widespread outrage across the Australian and international arts sectors.
The work in question, You, isn’t related to Sabsabi’s proposed 2026 Biennale work. It is an experimental video artwork which engages with the complexities of the 2006 Lebanon War and how Sabsabi, who was born in Tripoli and migrated to Australia in 1978, may have experienced this war remotely via newsfeed.
The work features images of now-deceased Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. It should be noted the work was made in 2007, 14 years before Australia determined Hezbollah to be a terrorist organisation. It resides in the prestigious collection of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
A double standard
Prior to Sabsabi, a number of prominent Australian artists have depicted outlaws and controversial figures in their work. So how were those works received?
Let’s look at Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series as an example. These 27 famous paintings depict the notorious bushranger Edward (Ned) Kelly’s final days in 1880. Nolan painted the series between 1946 and 1947, in the aftermath of the catastrophic second world war.
The works can be understood as an effort to investigate homegrown violence in Australia’s history, wherein the outlaw is a metaphor used to explore conflicting migrant/settler cultures among the bright and dusty central Victorian landscape.
Similarly, late Australian painter and 2000 Archibald Prize winner Adam Cullen did not meet much controversy when his 2002 portrait of convicted violent criminal Mark “Chopper” Read was installed in the Art Gallery of NSW. That same year, Cullen illustrated Mark Read’s children’s book, Hooky the Cripple.
An acclaimed artist, Cullen is revered for depicting violence and darkness in Australian culture. His works reside in most state and national collections.
Art thrives through diverse perspectives
Marri Ngarr artist Ryan Presley’s 2018 series Blood Money revises Australian banknotes to feature historical First Nations figures, and forms part of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s art collection.
Works in the series include First Nations colonial resistance fighters and outlaws Jandamarra (1873–97), Woloa (1800–31), Pemulwuy (1750–1802) and Dundalli (circa 1820–55).
These individuals waged violence against the Crown and were classified as enemy combatants in their time. Yet it’s fair to say they make compelling and appropriate subjects for Presley’s art, which helps us better understand Australia’s complex and violent history.
Iranian-born Australian photographer Hoda Afshar’s Agonistes (2020), an award-winning portrait series with accompanying video, features various Australian whistleblowers, including Witness K Lawyer Bernard Collaery and the incarcerated Afghan Files whistleblower David McBride.
Each figure depicted in Afshar’s portraits has faced punishment and persecution by local authorities, in part due to Australia’s weak whistleblower protection laws.
Khaled Sabsabi is a distinguished Australian artist whose Biennale proposal won a rigorous open tender to be exhibited in Venice 2026. Spanning 30 years, his work examines spiritualism, optimism and the intricate beauty of a migrant Australian experience that’s particularly unique to the global microcosm of Western Sydney.
If artists are to be cancelled for making works that spark “divisive debate”, as Creative Australia has called it, there won’t be much art left to see.
Authors: Ella Barclay, Senior Lecturer, School of Art and Design, Australian National University
Hashtag.net.au
