Artist Khaled Sabsabi

A promise is an assurance that is enlivened by an action. It is something made by one to another and confirmed through shared understanding. A promise embodies hope and trust but also anxiety and relief as it is either kept or broken.

I was born in Tripoli and migrated with my family to Australia in 1978 to flee the civil war in Lebanon. As a teenager I became interested in music and film and I often think back to those days listening to Prince and funk music. I also loved Eric B & Rakim and Public Enemy and began to make my own music and perform on Sydney’s hip-hop scene. In the 1990s I made the move to visual art, but I still like to incorporate music and film in my work. After 2001 I went through a period of self-reflection and embarked on a series of visits to my birthplace and the surrounding countries. These journeys have inspired me to make work about the connection between spiritual belief, culture and politics.

When curator Matt Cox and I began working on this exhibition about a year ago, we entered into an agreement to work respectfully, to acknowledge each other’s perspectives and to meet challenges together. In sum, we made a commitment to see it through, we made a promise. We weren’t to know that COVID-19 was just around the corner but as promises go, we remained steadfast and travelled by phone and internet to meet and talk along the way. I’m pleased to think we have almost made it through and am looking forward to seeing the works in the Gallery space.

This exhibition will present works made over the last 20 years since 2001. It is a personal map of sorts that traces the complex relationship between the self and other, belief, devotion and the possibilities for transcendence. I hope that you can join me on this journey.

– Khaled Sabsabi


Khaled Sabsabi, 70,000 veils 2004-14, 96-channel HD video installation

This work ruminates on the relationship between religion and spirituality in the digital era. In Sufism it is very difficult to explain the true meaning of the Arabic word Nur (light). Light is the purest entity that exists. In Sufi texts the Divine, described Itself as being Nur. Sufi texts say that true inspiration comes from knowledge, which comes from Nur enlightening an individual’s heart.

Nonetheless, the Prophet Muhammed, alayhi as-salām (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ), says there are 70,000 veils of light and darkness separating an individual from the Divine. Sufis understand these veils to refer to the degrees to which the Divine is beyond description and imagination.

This work took me approximately 10 years to make and involved manipulating 10,000 photos to decipher 70,000 digital layers, which were then reconstructed to create 1000 composited 3D video sequences displayed across the 96 LED TV monitors you see here.

In universal terms this work speaks to the mysteries of life. When we install the work and you have put on the 3D glasses we hope that you get a sense of being enveloped by it, or of passing through a veil or a threshold. You will see images that are like memories to me, including images of art and daily life that I photographed on my travels and here at home.