Last week, when the Chair of the Creative Australia Board and its CEO appeared at a Senate estimates hearing to answer questions about their Board’s decision to rescind the invitation of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino’s to be Australia’s 2026 Venice Biennale representatives, their explanations did little to quell the disquiet among the Australian arts sector surrounding these events.
Many in the art world continue to decry what they see as the unjust actions of a powerful, government-backed arts funding body board in intervening and overriding a decision taken by an expert independent curatorial panel.
Creative Australia’s Board Chair Robert Morgan and its CEO Adrian Collette told the hearing they felt compelled to act because of “the impact [the artist’s previous work, specifically the work Thank You Very Much (2006)] would have on the broader public”, and that “the impact of art does not reside with an artist’s intent. It resides in the way it is perceived by the public”.
The latter statement (only part of what Adrian Collette said on the night), reveals a lot about how this arts leader understands the experience of engaging with art.
Specifically, his implication that the artist’s intent plays little role in our understanding of, and engagement with a work seems a strange notion, and one which suggests our interpretation of art is based primarily on our immediate or strongest emotional impressions.
But to approach viewing art in this way misses the many layers of meaning it potentially has to offer.
Many of us will have memories of seeing an artwork for the first time and thinking ‘that’s disgusting!’ or ‘that’s offensive!’ or ‘what is the point of that?’.
Yet if we were to end our engagement with a work after those initial responses, it would be a very shallow – some may say incomplete – viewing, which curbs our capacity for a richer interpretation.
Sometimes, it’s very important to learn more about the artist’s experiences and how a work sits within their wider practice to fully realise its ideas.
And surely this process – of engaging with the art itself, but also having potential to connect with the artist’s intent – is a completely reasonable one, and part of the freedom art offers in allowing us to speculate, interpret and critique artists’ work.
Interestingly, within the context of the current Biennale furore, the artist at the centre of the debate, Khaled Sabsabi, has remained relatively quiet.
While he and curator Michael Dagostino released a statement in response to the Creative Australia Board decision to revoke their Biennale invitation, no allusion to the artist’s intent behind the work that Creative Australia is saying was key in the decision-making process – namely his 2006 work Thank You Very Much – was included.
Of course, it is not essential for artists to ‘explain’ their work to the public. Their most important job is to make the work, not necessarily talk about it.
But, as evidenced by an excerpt of an archival interview with Sabsabi played on the Schwartz Media podcast 7am this week (a recording that was not timestamped by the podcast hosts, so its exact date is unknown), there are insights we can glean about this artist’s work, if only we take the time to listen.
As Sabsabi says in the interview, “A lot of people almost miss the point of my artwork, or [miss] the essence of what I’m saying in my work. My works have been called extremist, [but] my work is essentially about humanity and commonality.”
Further to that, in an interview with The Guardian published just days before the artist’s invitation to the Biennale was rescinded, he told the publisher that he was “quite shocked” to be selected, adding that, “in this time and in this space” he thought “this wouldn’t happen because of who I am” (Sabsabi is a Lebanese-born Australia who moved to Sydney in 1978 with his family during Lebanon’s civil war).
In the same interview, Sabsabi said, “The majority of [my] work has been about ideas of representation, ideas of identity and looking at breaking stereotypes, especially within the Australian context of Muslims and Arabs.”
These words are only the briefest of sound bites, yet they still give us insight into Sabsabi’s practice and his career as an artist and, surely, if we only stopped to listen, these words are an important way we can form a deeper understanding of his work.
That said, we certainly don’t have to agree with what the artist has to say, nor do we have to like or feel good about his work (isn’t that another important part of the process of engaging with art?). But it behoves us to explore art from multiple angles – including the capacity to acknowledge the artist’s intent.
