Khaled Sabsabi’s 2007 multi-channel video work, You, has been at the centre of recent controversy relating to the artist’s appointment—and the subsequent rescinding of his appointment—to represent Australia at the 2026 Venice Biennale, alongside curator Michael Dagostino.
On the basis of this work, which depicts the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (recently killed by an Israeli air strike), the Liberal Party’s Shadow Minister for the Arts, Claire Chandler, asked in parliament:
“With such appalling antisemitism in our country, why is the Albanese government allowing the person who highlights a terrorist leader in his artwork to represent Australia on the international stage?”1
Chandler’s question was triggered by an article published in The Australian one day earlier, which described Sabsabi’s use of Nasrallah’s image as “questionable and ambiguous,” before claiming that the work could be “construed as reverence” for the Hezbollah leader.2
There is no evidence that Sabsabi supports terrorism, and it bears mentioning that Hezbollah was not a designated terrorist group when Sabsabi made You.3 But that is beside the point. Chandler’s implied accusation of antisemitism levelled against Sabsabi follows a recent pattern in Australia (and globally) in which those who speak up for Palestine are systematically silenced and attacked, usually on the basis of unfounded accusations of antisemitism.4 This has been directed especially at the Arab and Muslim community (examples such as Antoinette Latouf and Randa Abdel-Fattah come to mind), but has not been limited to this demographic; even Jewish activists and academics—for instance, Sarah Schwarz—have faced enormous backlash for critiquing Zionism and calling out Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. In the interest of cutting through this noise, and providing balance against the swift decision-making of Creative Australia, this text offers close analysis of You.5
What I present here is preliminary analysis, based on a single-channel, two-minute excerpt (of the 10-minute video) available online. While it is important to conduct a full, detailed analysis of the entire work, there is still great value in examining the version of the work that is easily accessible, as this excerpt provides ample material for concrete, critical and illuminating analysis.6
My argument is that the work simply cannot be described as an uncritical endorsement or celebration of Nasrallah. Sabsabi’s deliberate deconstruction and even defacing of Nasrallah’s likeness (his face and his voice), through the montaged and digitally altered form of the work, provokes open-ended critical reflection: on the forms of mass media, on the construction of god-like political leaders, and on Nasrallah himself as a deeply contested political figure (a symbol of resistance for some, and a terrifying threat to others, at once both messiah and antichrist).
The excerpt of You available online begins with footage of Nasrallah delivering a speech, in Arabic, to a large and noisy crowd. A recently updated description of the work on the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney website explains the original context of the footage:
“Sabsabi took the image and sound from a televised rally which took place in Beirut in 2006 marking the end of a 34-day war with Israel that was mainly fought in the south of Lebanon. Thousands attended the rally, held in Beirut’s heavily bombed Shiite Muslim south, to hear Nasrallah claim victory on behalf of Hezbollah.”7
Sabsabi’s use of this footage, however, is far from straightforward. Nasrallah’s face is covered by a kind of spectral radiance, a bright light centred on and moving with his head as he speaks. This light seems to flicker on and off, at times leaving Nasrallah’s face visible for a few moments, before then returning and rendering him faceless again. As the work progresses, the video is quadruplicated, then quadruplicated again, and again, leading eventually to 64 copies of the video running simultaneously, all out of sync with one another. Across these duplications, the bright light over Nasrallah’s face appears and disappears irregularly. Meanwhile, Sabsabi plays with the audio, too—at one point, the crowd surges, and we lose Nasrallah’s voice. Then, his words return, but only one short phrase is repeated. The excerpt ends as this phrase is looped behind the 64 copies of Nasrallah’s face.
So, what is going on? Firstly, I’d like to tackle head on the accusation put forward by Chandler and others, that the work celebrates Nasrallah.8 The history of political art and propaganda is complex, but one thing I can say with confidence is: if you wish to celebrate a political figure, the way to do it is not to dissemble and dissect the figure’s likeness. Indeed, we have countless art historical examples that speak to this fact.
One of Stalin’s key interventions in the Soviet avant-garde was to abolish the use of montage, to favour instead the whole, un-fractured and overtly celebratory images of himself enabled by the aesthetic doctrine of Socialist Realism. This is something that Hitler and the Nazis were cognisant of, as well. When Nazi designers and propagandists started to import the techniques of propaganda exhibitions first pioneered by avant-gardists in the Soviet Union (most notably El Lissitzky at the 1928 Pressa exhibition), one of their main adaptations was to abandon the cutting-up quality of earlier Soviet montage. Instead, it was essential that Hitler always appeared monumental and whole.9
The techniques favoured (or, more accurately, demanded) by authoritarian leaders of the 1920s and 1930s—a period that was a veritable testing ground for propaganda aesthetics, for the celebration and adoration of political leaders—are a far cry from what we see in Sabsabi’s You. Not only has Sabsabi pieced together a complex and ever-changing montage of Nasrallah, but he has also obscured the leader’s face and voice through his digital manipulations. While some have likened the light that intermittently covers Nasrallah’s face to that of a halo, others have described the radiance as “laser beams of hate.”10 I would suggest that there is a sense of violence in the spectral light, reminiscent of the way one might scratch out a face in a photograph.
This kind of obscuring, a literal de-facing, bears little resemblance to the aesthetics of uncritical propaganda. Instead, Sabsabi’s interventions make one think of the critical approach to montage pioneered in the 1920s by Soviets (Klutsis, Lissitzky, Eisenstein, etc.) and Germans (Heartfield, Grosz, Höch, etc.). For these artists, designers, and filmmakers, disjuncture and fracture were used as a mechanism to forcefully provoke a more active response in the viewer, to force the viewer to look and think more closely than they would otherwise have to do when viewing a coherent, whole image.11 This kind of active and critical viewing was distinct from the desires of authoritarians like Stalin and Hitler. For avant-garde monteurs, these disjunctive processes “offered a way to disassemble and reassemble the world order, making it possible to construct a new world or to issue an ideological critique by deconstructing conventional representations” (emphasis added).12 This is exactly what artists like John Heartfield and Hannah Höch did in their photomontage critiques of the Weimar Republic and the German Social Democratic Party—they used the disjuncture of montage to signal, in the formal fabric of their work, a critique of German political life and the role of mass media therein.
Sabsabi’s You does something very similar with the likeness of Nasrallah, particularly in terms of deconstructing conventional representations. The work does not encourage the viewer to simply celebrate Nasrallah. It certainly does not simply “highlight” the leader, as Chandler claimed; rather, by drawing attention to the very processes of repetition and amplification common to mass/social media, it encourages us to unpack, critique, and examine the way groups like Hezbollah use propaganda (often disseminated via news and social media) to imbue leaders like Nasrallah with an almost god-like quality.13 This is an essential part of these leaders’ power, especially when they must be measured against the military strength of Israel. A similar interpretation of the work has been put forward on the MCA website, which describes You as drawing attention to “the media-controlled image in the service of ideology-driven propaganda.”14 To put it in more avant-garde terms, the form of You does not just encourage, but in fact forces more active viewing, engagement, and response (interestingly, this is precisely what Chandler and Sabsabi’s detractors have failed to do). In doing so, the work vehemently resists any simple or didactic interpretation, for better or for worse. Thus, someone who comes to the work with a desire to uncritically celebrate Nasrallah will certainly be disappointed; as the Hezbollah leader’s face is duplicated again and again, obscured and revealed, as his words are heard and then lost, covered by the crowd or set on a loop, the viewer is necessarily shocked out of comfortable or passive viewing behaviour, making uncritical adoration nearly impossible.
This complexity, this resistance to simple or straightforward interpretation, is compounded by Sabsabi’s manipulation of Nasrallah’s words. It may come as no surprise that Chandler, The Australian, and other recent critics of the work have made no effort to engage with the Arabic words spoken by Nasrallah in You. Like the footage, the audio comes from a televised rally. In his speech, Nasrallah blesses the gathered masses. Most important to the work is the passage that Sabsabi places on loop, which is a common Islamic prayer called the Isti’adhah, typically recited before reading the Qur’an: “I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan.”15 And yet, against the roaring noise of the crowd, the words that cut through most clearly in Sabsabi’s loop are just the last two: ‘Shaytani rajeem, … Shaytani rajeem, … Shaytani rajeem’16 — accursed Satan, accursed Satan, accursed Satan. This repetition is difficult to contend with: is Nasrallah appearing here as he would have to the raucous crowds in Beirut? As a messianic political leader offering a blessing to his adoring congregation? Or does this incessant repetition subversively suggest some kind of connection between Nasrallah and the accursed Satan?17
As many principled and honest commentators have rightly noted, this deliberate ambiguity and complexity is central to You, and is typical of Sabsabi’s practice (and contemporary art more broadly).18 I hope that, through this reading of You, I have been able to provide a closer and more nuanced understanding of Sabsabi’s work, as a counterweight to the simplistic and dishonest claims that have been made by Chandler and others. It may be wishful thinking to hope to persuade those writers and critics who have attacked Sabsabi so wickedly over the last few weeks. But I trust this essay is of use to the wonderful, staunch, and dauntless community of artists, arts workers, art historians, writers and activists who have stood with Sabsabi and Dagostino by questioning the actions of politicians, conservative critics, and Creative Australia alike.
1. Chandler, quoted in Linda Morris, “Australian artists are furious. Our peak arts agency has questions to answer,” Sydney Morning Herald, 23 February 2025, https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/australian-artists-are-furious-our-peak-arts-agency-has-questions-to-answer-20250219-p5ldk1.html
2. Yoni Bashan and Nick Evans, “Arts council takes creative approach to racism,” The Australian, 12 February, 2025.
3. Hezbollah was only designated a terrorist group in 2021.
4. One point weaponised against Sabsabi in The Australian article was his participation in a boycott of the 2022 Sydney Festival due to its funding links with the Israeli government.
5. In this task, this essay complements Rex Butler and Paris Lettau’s excellent analysis of Sabsabi’s Thank You Very Much (2006), “Khaled Sabsabi, Thank You Very Much (2006),” Memo Review, 20 February, 2025, https://www.memoreview.net/reviews/khaled-sabsabi-thank-you-very-much-2006
6. For some interesting discussion regarding previous installations of the work, see Daniel Browning, Rex Butler, and Paris Lettau, “An art historical approach to the work of Khaled Sabsabi,” ABC Radio National: The Art Show, 26 February, 2025, https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/the-art-show/an-art-historical-approach-to-the-work-of-khaled-sabsabi/104907792; Amelia Winata, “The Cancellation of Khaled Sabsabi Reveals Australia’s Conservative Turn,” ArtReview, 12 March 2025, https://artreview.com/the-cancellation-of-khaled-sabsabi-reveals-creative-australia-conservative-turn-venice-biennale-golden-lion-antisemitism-michael-dagostino-opinion-amelia-winata/
7. Museum of Contemporary Art, “Khaled Sabsabi, You, 2007,” last updated 27 February, 2025, https://www.mca.com.au/collection/artworks/2009.153/
8. While Chandler’s specific word was ‘highlights,’ the context of her attack on Sabsabi leaves no doubt about her inference that the work aimed to present Nasrallah in a positive light.
9. For more on this, in relation to the Nazi exhibition Die Kamera (1933) see Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “From Faktura to Factography,” October 30 (Autumn 1984): 112-15; Jorge Ribalta, “Introduction,” in Public Photographic Spaces: Exhibitions of Propaganda, from Pressa to the Family of Man, 1928-55, ed. Jorge Ribalta (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2008), 19-20.
10. An earlier version of the work’s webpage on the MCA’s website claimed that the light was “suggestive of a divine illumination.” This earlier version is quoted in Alex Greenberger, “Australia Drops Its 2026 Venice Biennale Artist After Controversy over Video Featuring Hezbollah Leader,” ARTNews, 13 February, 2025, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/australia-drops-2026-venice-biennale-khaled-sabsabi-hezbollah-video-1234732394/. The description of the spectral light as “laser beams of hate” was made by Cecelia Cmielewski, a researcher at the University of Western Sydney, quoted in Butler and Lettau, “Khaled Sabsabi, Thank You Very Much (2006),” footnote 1.
11. Sabine Kriebel, “Manufacturing Discontent: John Heartfield’s Mass Medium,” New German Critique 107, vol. 36, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 62; Steve Edwards, “‘Profane Illumination’: Photography and Photomontage in the USSR and Germany,” in Art of the Avant-Gardes, eds. Steve Edwards and Paul Wood, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 419; Patrizia McBride, The Chatter of the Visible: Montage and Narrative in Weimar Germany (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2016), 3-6.
12. Kriebel, “Manufacturing Discontent,” 62.
13. I would also add that the intense fracturing and use of repetition in You seems almost prophetic in light of the explosion of short-form video media via TikTok and Instagram Reels.
14. Museum of Contemporary Art, “Khaled Sabsabi, You, 2007.”
15. أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ I thank my dear friend and comrade, Oula Shihan, for translating Nasrallah’s words and explaining the context of this specific prayer. For more on the Isti’adhah, see: Al-Dirassa Institute, “Understanding Al Isti’adha and Al Basmala: An In-depth Exploration,” accessed 13 March 2025, https://al-dirassa.com/en/al-istiadha-and-al-basmala-tajweed-rules/
16. الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ
17. Thanks must again be paid to Oula here, whose own reflections on You suggested this particular interpretation of the work’s audio.
18. This point is emphasised and convincingly made in Butler and Lettau’s review of Thank You Very Much.
Dr Christian Rizzalli is a Teaching Associate (Lecturer) in art history at UQ. His research is concerned with the relationship between art, photography, architecture, and politics, particularly in the context of the interwar avant-garde.
