The Creative Australia board meeting that led to Lebanese-Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi being dumped as the nation’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale was “fraught and heartbreaking”, the artist Lindy Lee has revealed.
On Monday the federal arts funding organisation announced an immediate, independent, external review of the selection process.
Lee resigned her board position on Friday after it unanimously decided the night before to ditch the award-winning artist and his artistic partner, the curator Michael Dagostino, amid media and political criticism of some of Sabsabi’s historical artworks.
She joined two other senior resignations over the decision: Mikala Tai, who has led Creative Australia’s visual arts department, and Tahmina Maskinyar, a program manager, have both tendered their resignations to the chief executive, Adrian Collette.
In a statement posted on Instagram on Sunday, Lee said she was bound by confidentiality over the board’s meeting but said “in no direction was there anywhere to breathe”.
“I need to say that I feel honoured to have served on the board of Creative Australia,” Lee said.
“Nobody except those involved can ever know how fraught and heartbreaking that meeting was.”
Lee said she had come away feeling “deeply conflicted and realised that I had to resign”.
“I could not live the level of violation I felt against one of my core values – that the artist’s voice must never be silenced,” Lee said.
“We live in very fractured, broken times. There is a lot of hurt out there. More than ever the artist’s voice is needed.”
Guardian Australia understands that the legal academic and author Larissa Behrendt was the only board member not present for the unanimous decision.
On Monday the board said it would commission a review of the process that resulted in Sabsabi and Dagostino’s selection.
The terms of reference have yet to be released but the Guardian understands the independent review will not look into the decision to withdraw the pair from the 2026 international event.
The five-member selection panel included Prof Anthony Gardner, the head of the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford, Dunja Rmandić, the director of the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Dr Mariko Smith, the First Nations curator at the Australian Museum, Wassan Al-Khudhairi, a curator of contemporary art from the Arab world and Elaine Chia, the executive director of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation.
None of the panellists have so far commented on the board’s decision to rescind their selection.
The move to rescind the invitation has been condemned by many artists and leading art organisations, who say it sets a concerning precedent for artistic freedom and independence within cultural institutions.
The federal arts minister Tony Burke has denied allegations of political interference, despite expressing his “shock” at Sabsabi’s work in the hours before the board dumped him.
On Sunday Burke said the artwork of concern was a 2006 video rendering which included images of the 9/11 attacks and a clip of US president George Bush saying “thank you very much”.
He said he supported the board’s decision to remove Sabsabi while also praising him as a “gifted artist” who has produced work of “extraordinary quality”.
“I support that they’ve made the decision, but it’s been made at arm’s length from me,” he said.
“I have seen this artist’s work over the years, and aside from that work I will say he is an extraordinary and gifted artist. I was looking forward, as I think everyone at Creative Australia was, to the work that he’d been commissioned to do at the Venice Biennale.”
The move has garnered global attention, with the London-based The Art Newspaper reporting on the accusations of “cowardice” that have been levelled against Creative Australia. The international art publication e-flux has published a letter by the five shortlisted teams demanding Sabsabi’s reinstatement.
The Greens’ spokesperson for the arts, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, said the board’s about-face was a “big mistake and must be reversed and investigated”.
“We need a full independent inquiry into the crisis,” Hanson-Young said. “The integrity of Creative Australia is on the line.
“Artistic expression must be free from political interference and intimidation. This is nothing short of an international arts embarrassment for Australia.”
Contacted for comment, Creative Australia said it had nothing further to add to the statement it released on Thursday.
That statement said the board “believes a prolonged and divisive debate about the 2026 selection outcome poses an unacceptable risk to public support for Australia’s artistic community and could undermine our goal of bringing Australians together through art and creativity”.
