the companion will be available from October 2026 

Edited by José Da Silva and designed by Suzanne Boccalatte, the publication features writing by Michael Dagostino, Claire Dillon, Kon Gouriotis OAM, Tahmina Maskinyar, Hammad Nasar, Dr Nur Shkembi OAM, and Dr Mikala Tai. 

Title: the companion 
Editor: José Da Silva 
Designer: Suzanne Boccalatte 
Pub Date: 23 September 2026 
Binding: Hardcover 
Extent: 256 pages 
Illustrations: 150 color images 
Trim Size: 14.5 x 19.5 cm 
ISBN: 978-3-69370-002-0 EN 
Price: 32 euros

Image credit: the companion publication 2026 for Khaled Sabsabi’s presentations at Biennale Arte 2026. Photo courtesy: Suzanne Boccalatte

From October 2026, Creative Australia will publish the companion in collaboration with Spector Books, a richly illustrated publication designed to support Khaled Sabsabi’s presentation at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. 

The hardcover publication documents and provides new insights on both exhibitions presented by Sabsabi, conference of one’s self at the Australia Pavilion curated by Michael Dagostino, and khalil within the international exhibition In Minor Keys, conceived by the late curator Koyo Kouoh. Hyperallergic described the works as ‘a solid hymn to the billions who carry melancholy and riotous joy in the same heart.’ 

In a historic first for an Australian artist, Sabsabi simultaneously presents work in the International Exhibition, In Minor Keys, and in the Australia Pavilion at this year’s Biennale Arte 2026. Sabsabi’s multisensory installations combine moving images, sound, and painting to explore spirituality, migration, and shared humanity. Central to the presentations is a philosophical framework drawn from tasawwuf (Sufi thought, in which spiritual transformation unfolds through reflection and collective experience, inviting audiences to reflect on the interconnectedness of the inner and outer self. 

Edited by José Da Silva, Director of UNSW Galleries, Sydney, and designed by Suzanne Boccalatte, founder and creative director of Boccalatte design consultancy, the publication features essays by writers and academics who have followed Sabsabi’s career and practice, providing valuable perspectives and deeper understanding of the artist and his work. Contributors include: Michael Dagostino, curator of the Australia Pavilion; Claire Dillon, art historian and public scholar; Kon Gouriotis, managing director of Bandicoot Publishing, Art Almanac, and Artist Profile; Tahmina Maskinyar, researcher, writer, and curator at West Space, Melbourne; Hammad Nasar, curator, writer, and director of programmes and content at Ibraaz, London; Nur Shkembi, curator, writer, and art historian; and Mikala Tai, writer, curator, and cultural strategist.

A launch event will be held at the Australia Pavilion in Venice on Wednesday, September 23 from 3 PM - 4 PM. Register your attendance to the launch of the companion here. To place a preorder for the companion, please email venice@creative.gov.au.

Press images: Dropbox link 
Press material for Contributors

Exhibition Details 

61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 
Exhibition Dates: May 9 – November 22 2026 

• Khaled Sabsabi presents conference of one’s self, curated by Michael Dagostino at the Australia Pavilion, located in the Giardini della Biennale, as a part of the Biennale Arte 2026, commissioned by Creative Australia. 
• Khaled Sabsabi’s work khalil is presented within the International Exhibition In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh, in the Arsenale. The artist is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

Website theinvitation.com.au

About the Artist: Khaled Sabsabi 

Khaled Sabsabi is an acclaimed, award-winning Australian multidisciplinary artist whose work explores human collectiveness, the complexities of identity politics, and the impact of ideology through a continual transfer between the material and the philosophical. For over 35 years, he has worked across mediums and borders, collaborating with communities locally and internationally. Sabsabi’s work centres on social justice and lived experience informed by his migration from Lebanon in 1976 to escape the civil war. 

Sabsabi sees art as an effective tool to communicate and converse with people, through a familiar language, creating immersive and engaging experiences. Khaled started out his artistic practice working in hip-hop, as a performer and as a youth worker, engaging with Arabic, Aboriginal, and Pacific Islander communities. As he established his artistic practice, he also worked in detention centres, schools, prisons, refugee and settlement camps, hospitals and youth centres. This foundational means of community informed public service helped to establish social advocacy as the core of his process and practice and continues to impact his art making. 

Sabsabi has been the recipient of more than fifteen international awards, including the Creative Australia ‘Annual Visual Arts Award’ 2023, International Council of Museums’ and Heritage Awards, Video Art Prize 2016, and the Sharjah Art Programme Prize in 2016. He has produced more than 65 major mixed media and installation-based works to date, exhibiting in over 90 solo and group art exhibitions in Australia and internationally including 5th Marrakech Biennale, 18th Biennale of Sydney and the 21st Biennale of Sydney, 9th Shanghai Biennale, Sharjah Biennial 11, 1st Yinchuan Biennale, 3rd Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2018 and 2024. Sabsabi is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane. 
 

Contributors

Suzanne Boccalatte is an award-winning designer, writer and cultural theorist whose practice spans more than three decades. As founder and creative director of Boccalatte, she has led visual and strategic work across Australia’s cultural sector for organisations including Powerhouse, ACMI, Carriageworks, Sydney Opera House, ABC, the Art Gallery of South Australia, HOTA, Bundanon and UNSW Galleries. Her work is held in national collections including the National Gallery of Australia and Powerhouse. Boccalatte was formerly Professor of Practice at UNSW Art & Design and completed a PhD at Western Sydney University in 2026. 

Michael Dagostino is the Director of the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney. As a relatively new museum, it unites the university’s diverse collections into a multidisciplinary institution dedicated to education and community engagement. As founding director of Parramatta Artists Studios, he established a key platform for emerging artists. In 2011, he became Director of Campbelltown Arts Centre, where he continued an artist-driven program supporting local, national, and international collaborations. Notable projects include With Secrecy and Despatch (2016), co-curated with Tess Allas and David Garneau, exploring colonial impacts through the Appin Massacre, and Another Day in Paradise (2017), showcasing Myuran Sukumaran’s work co-curated by Ben Quilty. Dagostino curated Lisa Reihana’s Cinemania (2018) and commissioned the Australian First Nations component of her In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] for the New Zealand Pavillion at the Venice Biennale (2017). A Hope and A Promise (2021), co curated by Adam Porter and Matt Cox, surveyed Khaled Sabsabi’s 30-year practice held at the Art Gallery of NSW and Campbelltown Arts Centre.

Dagostino has received Imagine Awards and ICOM awards for institutional excellence. His board memberships include Sydney Dance Company, FBi Radio, Accessible Arts, and the Sydney Writers’ Festival, alongside advisory roles for the New South Wales Government. He remains committed to advancing museums’ role in fostering access, equity and authorship.

José Da Silva is an Australian curator and the Director of UNSW Galleries, Sydney where he has led a program of contemporary Australian art and design since 2018. In 2024, he curated the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and became Chair of University Art Museums Australia. From 2006-18, he also contributed widely to a program of exhibitions, commissions, acquisitions, and events at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, including a role in the curatoriums for five editions of the ‘Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’. He has contributed writing to a wide variety of publications, including monographs for the Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Australia, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Room40, Gertrude Contemporary, and Institute of Modern Art. 

Claire Dillon is an art historian and public scholar researching the intersections of visual cultures, identities, and faiths in the medieval Mediterranean and their modern afterlives. In addition to her writing on contemporary art, she studies histories of medieval silk production and its legacies in modern design, the architecture of Italian Empire, and the ways in which the medieval past is exploited by modern extremist movements. She is a PhD candidate at Columbia University, specializing in the arts of the lands of Islam. Her work has been supported by the American Academy in Rome, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mellon Foundation, and the International Interfaith Research Lab, among other institutions. 

Tahmina Maskinyar is a curator, researcher and writer, born in Kabul and raised near the Djarlgarro Beelier (Canning River) on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja. Her practice creates space for artistic work to flourish at the intersection of critical discourse, place, and global solidarities. She is currently curator at West Space, a contemporary art gallery in Yálla-birr-ang on Wurundjeri Country (Collingwood, Melbourne) where she facilitates the West Space Commissions, Studio and practice development programs. Maskinyar holds First Class Honours in Architecture from the University of Western Australia (2011) and is completing a PhD in Art History at Monash University, examining the imperial conditions that shape contemporary artistic encounters with places in Afghanistan. She was project manager for the Golden Lion-winning exhibition kith and kin by Archie Moore and curator Ellie Buttrose at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024). Her writing has been published in Australian arts and architectural journals. 

Hammad Nasar is a curator, writer and Director of Programmes & Content at Ibraaz, London. He was Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre (part of Yale University), where he co-led the ‘London, Asia’ project, and Principal Research Fellow at UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute. Previously, he was: Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London; Head of Research & Programmes at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; and co-founder of Green Cardamom, London. Known for collaborative, exhibition-led inquiry, Nasar has curated or co-curated numerous international exhibitions, including: Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now and Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends (both 2023–24); British Art Show 9 (2021–22); Turner Prize (2021); Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play – the UAE’s national pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); and Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2005–14).

Dr Nur Shkembi OAM is a curator, writer and art historian specialising in Islamic art, contemporary art and postcolonial theory. Nur has produced and curated over 150 events, exhibitions and community engagement projects and was part of the core team which established the Islamic Museum of Australia, serving as the museum’s inaugural Art Director, Exhibitions Manager and foundation Curator. Much of her interest has been in the development of community awareness in relation to the arts with a focus on the presence of Australian Muslim artists in the cultural landscape. Nur has written for academic texts and journals, exhibition catalogues and is a published author, with her debut novel Rookie distributed nationwide for the Australian high school curriculum by Cengage. Her writing is also featured in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Gallery magazine, un Magazine, Artist Profile, Crikey and ReOrient. Nur engages her independent curatorial practice nationally, exhibitions include Waqt al Tagheer (ACE Open) Khalas! (UNSW Galleries), The Inner Apartment (Nishi Gallery and National Museum of Australia), We Are All Affected (Fairfield City Museum and Peacock Gallery), SOUL fury (Bendigo Art Gallery), Destiny Disrupted (Granville Arts Centre, Sydney and Griffith University Art Museum), DOMINION (University of Melbourne) and Five Acts of Love (ACCA). Nur is a founding member of eleven; a collective of contemporary Muslim Australian artists, curators and writers. 

Mikala Tai is an independent writer, curator and cultural strategist based in Sydney. A specialist in contemporary Australian and Asian art, she has collaborated with local, national, and international organisations to strengthen cultural connections between Australia and Asia. Starting her career at the National Gallery of Victoria, Mikala has most recently served as Head of Visual Arts at Creative Australia, where she was Project Director for Archie Moore’s Gold Lion–winning kith and kin. Prior to that, she was Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney. In 2015, she received her PhD, examining the influence of the global city on China’s local art infrastructure, and continues to maintain an active role in academia. Recent work can be found in writing for Art Review, Artist Profile, and Art and Australia, and as exhibition projects across Australia. 

About Creative Australia 

Creative Australia is the Australian Government’s principal arts investment and advisory body. They invest in creative people and organisations and help build audiences and markets for Australian creative work, both in Australia and internationally. They focus on developing skills and workforce capability, promoting equitable careers and workplaces, and building partnerships to support a sustainable and thriving creative sector. They advocate for the value of arts and culture and for the outcomes and priorities identified by artists and creative workers from across the creative and cultural industries. For more information visit our website's about section.
 

About Spector Books 

Founded in 2001 in Leipzig, Germany, Spector Books publishes work at the intersection of art, theory, and design. Their practice seeks to foster active exchange between all parties involved in the book production process to create productive, innovative approaches to publishing.
 

Distribution 

Germany, Austria: GVA, Gemeinsame Verlagsauslieferung GöttingenGmbH&Co. KG, www.gva-verlage.de 
Switzerland: AVA Verlagsauslieferung AG, www.ava.ch 
France, Belgium: Interart Paris, www.interart.fr 
Eastern Europe: Obibook, www.obibook.com 
UK: Central Books Ltd, www.centralbooks.com 
USA, Canada, Central and South America, Africa: ARTBOOK/ D.A.P, www.artbook.com 
South Korea: The Book Society, www.thebooksociety.org 
Japan: twelvebooks, www.twelve-books.com 
Australia, New Zealand: Perimeter Distribution, www.perimeterdistribution.com 

For media enquiries within Australia and New Zealand, please contact:

Jasmine Hersee | ARTICULATE
T: +61 (0) 451 087 196 | E: jasmine@articulateadvisory.com

Claire Martin |ARTICULATE
T: +61 (0) 414 437 588 | E: claire@articulateadvisory.com

For international media enquiries, please contact:

Andy Cushman | Blue Medium
T: +1 212-675-1800| E: acushman@bluemedium.com