Tripoli-born Western Sydney artist Khaled Sabsabi, who was announced today as Australia’s representative at the 61^st Venice Biennale in 2026, has promised his multimedia work, yet to be unveiled, will be about building empathy and inclusivity, expressing hope it will bring people together.

Sabsabi, 59, whose parents fled Lebanon’s civil war in 1976, reflected on the recent bombardment of Gaza at the unveiling of his successful collaborative bid with curator Michael Dagostino for the prized spot in Australia’s pavilion at Venice. It represents his fifth proposal submitted for the biennale during his career, as well as his second pitch with Dagostino for the international honour.

“What the work will look like, I can’t say [yet], but as a human being, as a Lebanese, as an Arab, as a Muslim, as an Australian, what’s being happening [in the Middle East], to me, is inhumane, and unacceptable,” he says.

“Having said that, I support peace … this violence, destruction, cannot be sustained. We need a way forward to exist and co-exist, and to respect the right of Palestinians, their right of return, and to their lands and culture.”

Sabsabi, whose work is partly inspired by Sufism (a form of Islamic mysticism), the writings of the Afghan poet Rumi and the African American civil rights leader Malcolm X, was speaking at the Parramatta Artists Studios in Granville, immediately around the corner from Good Street, where he spent his teenage years.

There, his parents opened one of the first video stores in the region, which also specialised in Arabic music. The store “became a really important source for my inspiration and learning”, shaping who he would become: a socially engaged artist, beginning his creative career as a hip-hop performer, adopting the moniker Peace Fender, named for the iconic guitar brand.

Sabsabi said his work always begins with a concept, working through emotions and ideas before considering mediums and materials. His eight-channel video work Organised confusion (2014), for instance, interrogated the fanaticism and transcendence of crowds. A 100-channel video work from the same year, 70,000 Veils, took 10 years to make and, like much of his work, was about the theme of “giving and receiving”.

His 2018 work for the 21^st Biennale of Sydney at Cockatoo Island was the installation Bring the Silence, recreating a maqam—an Islamic sacred space. It also featured five doubled-sided screens suspended from the ceiling and bowls of rosewater and straw mats on the floor. Bring the Silence was one of a couple of works about the “destruction and reconstruction of history”, during a time in which ISIS was destroying sacred Buddhist, Muslim and Christian sites.

A maqām, says Sabsabi, “is where an enlightened one rests [and] people come to offer and receive blessings, and this idea of giving and receiving, for me, is what we can all learn from. The destruction of these sites, it’s a loss to humanity”.

His only work about a personal childhood memory is Aajnya (1998). To make the installation, he used coffee—culturally significant across Arabic cultures—to replicate how the shimmer of light appeared when someone opened a door to the makeshift bunker where his family sheltered from bombings during the Lebanese Civil War. “As a child, everything is amplified, so a minute becomes a week,” he recalls.

Sabsabi’s forthcoming work for the 2026 Venice Biennale was borne of a his two-month residency at the American Academy in Rome after being awarded the Mordant Family and Creative Australia Affiliated Fellowship in 2024. “Something clicked for me,” he says. “What we can reveal is it [the artwork] will be an inclusive place, a place that brings people together. I like to use the word ‘nurturing’—looking at my artmaking DNA, you can probably see it will mostly consist of multimedia and multi materials.”

Sabsabi said he deeply admired kith and kin, the monumental work by Kamilaroi / Bigambul artist Archie Moore, which won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the Venice Biennale in 2024, the first time Australia had won the award.

“I’d like to offer my respects to Archie on the incredible exhibition; it’s a landmark for all of us collectively,” said Sabsabi. “It’s an incredible work; we’re honoured to be following that … [we’re] building on that momentum.”

Sabsabi revealed that, when he went to see Moore’s work in Venice, he took a stone from the Australian pavilion and kept it. “I know you’re not supposed to do that, but that was a way for me that is part of our traditions, that you hold onto something so you can return back.”

The 61^st Venice Biennale opens in April 2026.