Multi-media artist Khaled Sabsabi's work reflects the complex and often fraught space of border identities, migrant territories and identity production, characterised by an ever changing and contingent nature. Born in Lebanon, Sabsabi migrated with this family to Australia in 1978, to settle in Western Sydney a predominantly migrant area.
Experiencing prejudice and social inequities in the late eighties, Hip Hop culture became a rich source of identification and inspiration, enabling him to express his sense of cultural and social displacement, not only from Lebanon, but also within his Australian home.
Sabsabi has been very involved in Art and Community work, especially with at-risk communities, in youth prisons and other facilities. This strong commitment to social advocacy resonates in his art practice. His work is socially engaged, exploring the polemics and ambivalence of cultural encounters often at points or zones of contact that are deeply fraught. His works interferes between zones of conflict and familiar suburban images highlighting the contrasting experiences of life lived within and outside of the reality of violence. While his work is informed by a diverse social and political landscape, it resists overly didactic readings.
Sabsadi was the recipient of the 2011 Blake Prize, the 2010 Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship and was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship in 2002. He has participated in the New Media Fest, SoundLAB, Beirut Arts Festival, Electrofringe, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, the Monographic Sample of Art Average Colombia and 3rd Digital Art Festival in Argentina and Italy. He has had solo exhibitions in Sydney at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Casula Powerhouse, Gallery 4A and Mori Gallery, and has exhibited in group exhibitions including Making It New: Focus on Contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Out of Place, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Integration, Assimilation and a fair go for ALL, Gallery 4A, Soft Power: Asian Attitudes, Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China, ASIA - EUROPE Mediations, National Gallery Poland, The Resilient Landscape, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Interdigitate, The Moving Image Centre, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand and Living Here Now - Art and Politics, Y2K, Australian Perspecta.
