The idea that an artwork should not be “divisive” is an extraordinary one, an anti-creative concept which, if you follow it to its natural conclusion, leads us inexorably to the end-point of propaganda.

And yet anxiety over possible divisiveness seems to have been the guiding emotional principle applied by the board of Creative Australia, the government’s main arts body, when it abruptly sacked Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi and his curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives at the prestigious Venice Biennale next year.

Curator Michael Dagostino (left) and artist Khaled Sabsabi have been reinstated after being dropped as Australia’s entry to Venice in 2026.Credit: Steven Siewert

The board, which this week reinstated the duo in a spectacular backflip, originally said it acted to avoid the erosion of public support for Australia’s artistic community that might ensue from a “prolonged and divisive debate”.

It is assumed that a prolonged and divisive debate about an artwork is a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be.

To be fair, the board’s anxieties were well-founded.

It was February 2025 and a caravan full of explosives had been discovered in north-west Sydney. This incident was quickly labelled an anti-Jewish terror plot but was later revealed to be a “criminal con job”. The Peter Dutton-led........

© The Age