Ten Curators in support of Khaled Sabsabi: Edition 10

Artist Profile will be publishing ten pieces of text from international and local curators as a series of editions. These distinguished curators provided their words voluntarily in support of Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino after Creative Australia “honoured Khaled and dishonoured him” (Simryn Gill, 7.30 Report) in less than a week of announcing Sabsabi and Dagostino as the 2026 Venice Biennale team to represent Australia.

The call for the reinstatement of Sabsabi and Dagostino has been loud and strong from within the visual arts community here and abroad. The curators in support of Sabsabi have previously written on and curated his artwork.

José Da Silva is an Australian curator and the Director of Sydney’s UNSW Galleries. In 2024, he curated Khaled Sabsabi’s Knowing Beyond, 2024, installation into the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art: Inner Sanctum at the Art Gallery of South Australia. . From 2006-18, he also contributed widely to a program of exhibitions, commissions, acquisitions, and events at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, including a role in the curatoriums for five editions of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.

Beyond Our Selves

Once, while in Khaled Sabsabi’s studio discussing ideas and future projects, he asked me if I had heard about the concept of a “seafaring soul,” quoting Lebanese poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran and his account of the soul’s battle for equilibrium. For Gibran, this analogy of soul-as-ship sees reason as the rudder and passion as its sails. Where one provides guidance and the risk of stagnation, the other is energising but risks becoming destructive if left unchecked.

This encouragement to see life with an attitude where intellect and emotion work together is foundational for Khaled. It has provided direction and vitality in his life, his approach to artmaking and his careful consideration of its subjects. He is acutely aware of the responsibilities that come with his practice and its search to understand belief and spirituality within the everyday. Khaled has spent decades experimenting with the possibilities of materials, sounds, and images to express our emotional inner selves and representative outer selves while attending deferentially to the Islamic sciences and knowledge systems that connect more than twenty-five percent of the world’s population.

What emerged from these discussions was the project Knowing Beyond 2024, presented as part of the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art: Inner Sanctum at the Art Gallery of South Australia. An installation combining paintings and video, Khaled’s work was a call for awareness beyond our individual selves, an idea drawn from his practice of Tasawwuf (Sufism) that shares resonance with all ideas of expanded consciousness that invite a deeper sense of humility. It was a transcendent work within the Biennial featuring sacred patterns and numerological systems denoting completeness within the physical and spiritual realms. Unlike anything else I’ve seen in Australian art recently; it connected different Abrahamic traditions into a space of shared spiritual thought.

Khaled has always championed projects that help foster a deeper understanding of faith within Australian culture. We first worked as curatorial colleagues for the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art on a project dealing with representations of Islam in contemporary film, documentary and video art. For Khaled, such a project was paramount to demonstrating diverse experiences and opinions from a contemporary Islamic world where communities shape their distinct versions of religious practices and institutions and re-imagine their possibilities. Khaled organised the first anasheed (chants) to be performed within an Australian art museum as part of the project. These spiritual songs and devotional chants popular throughout the Islamic world express love for the Prophet (Peace be upon him). They are sung in gatherings to strengthen faith and cultivate a closer relationship with the divine; like all forms of sacred music, their emotional and spiritual impact transcends language.

An essential aspect of both projects was Khaled’s firm belief that gallery-based activities should extend to give the public access to a lived understanding of faith and the opportunity to share spiritual solidarity. In the case of the Adelaide Biennial, Khaled sought to connect local communities between Western Sydney and Adelaide, culminating in a second presentation of anasheed at the Omar Bin Alkhattab Mosque (one of oldest surviving mosques in Australia) and the Art Gallery of South Australia by a group of young Islamic Sufis belonging to the paths of the eminent Rifai and Qadiri orders. To have witnessed these events organised by Khaled is to have experienced something unparalleled within an Australian art museum and to understand the deep generosity with which he has used his art and public profile to foster greater understanding and mutual respect within our communities.