BETWEEN SUNS

 13 August 2026

When Khaled Sabsabi was “cancelled” by the Creative Australia in 2025 as the Australian representative at the Venice Biennale, I was appalled both by the decision itself and the nativity of the funding body to think that choosing an artist of Middle Eastern heritage in the middle of the Gaza conflict wasn’t going to require careful management. Of course, after the arts community stood up to support him, CA did a review and reinstated him and his colleague/curator Michael Dagostino: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-04/khaled-sabsabi-venice-biennale-creative-australia-controversy/105490236

One response to the initially cancellation came from Vessel Contemporary, “[a]n interdisciplinary exhibition space and non-profit contemporary arts organisation that explores and generates new ideas of change through art, creativity, experimentation and societal exchange.” They reached out to Sabsabi and offered him a space to show his cancelled work in Fremantle. Of course, that was no longer required with the reinstatement but he honoured the agreement by providing a range of his work from over three decades. The exhibition is showing at the Naval Store (until 20 September), an old industrial building that does feel like many of the environments used for the Venice Biennale, albeit somewhat more rundown.

The works are both large scale and small, on paper and on video, representing people and symbols. His work captures his Sufi practice, the importance of coffee in his cultural heritage, as well as stories from his families escape from Lebanon during the 1976 Civil War. I confess that the work didn’t speak to me with the exception of one installation, Aajyna, in the old power station next door. It’s a white painted room with brown drips of coffee cascading down the walls – and the room smells of coffee too.:

“As a young child he, along with his family, sought shelter and refuge underneath and between foundations of buildings during the Lebanese Vivil War. They moved from building to building as the conflict took over the streets and, for days, stayed quiet in semi-darkness. In the moments when light did enter these spaces it illuminated the walls where brown drip marks rolled down the concrete amidst mildew. In desperation, his family would press flour into those drips to make a dough. Aajyna is the Arabic Lebanese for dough.”

It doesn’t really matter that I didn’t like most of the other work. I was happy to pay a voluntary entrance fee to support an organisation, Vessel, that had in turn supported an artist when they most needed it.