Sabsabi does not aestheticise war, nor does he take sides, but at the core of his diverse artistic practice lies a commitment to social justice. His art reflects both his background as an immigrant Australian as well as his professional work with youth communities in Western Sydney, in which he often deals with issues of violence, racism and discrimination.

I was directly confronted with the realities that I was just another privileged tourist, high on romantic notions of belonging and childhood memories. Also because here I was working my life away in another place and land for art, social awareness and justice, forgetting my people’s situations and their suffered hardships

The rap notes and personal archive of artist Khaled Sabsabi tell stories of a personal journey to freedom from asylum, involving hardship along the way; even though religion or social positions entail discrimination and isolation, freedom is the final destination. In his archive, photographic portraits of Sabsabi are placed alongside a t-shirt designed by the artist showing a print of Osama Bin Laden and a poster for the freedom of Palestine amongst other objects.

The 'return' of objects with 'low' cultural value to the space of the museum - such as shoes used by Sabsabi and Saouli in Oversite - creates a possibility for articulating difference in historical representation through audience participation. This possibility refers to both the expansion of the meaning of the object in the gallery - from functional to subjective - and the status of the audience's experience. This notion of audience experience entails attention to shoes as objects disengaged from their everyday function to layer different meanings and temporalities and produce moments of experiential tension. The tension was to result from the double reflection of shoes as both symbols of everyday routine (and the implicit complacency), and in their (voluntary) removal from that community.

He also knows that many Australians could not even point to Lebanon on a map, much less offer an informed opinion on a region that is, after all, a very long way away. Fortunately he has the capacity (like so many good artists) to distill complex issues into a few carefully chosen and striking visual metaphors or forms.

Sabsabi's installation captures the profound aesthetics of beauty, ugliness and all what lies in-between, revealing the inherent polycultural nature of Australia. But much more than that, there is a meaning that can be grasped when one gets too close to the close-ups. Each screen is sovereign. It embodies its own facial allocation as well as seamlessly being part of a face.

This exhibition, then, is about borders and boundaries, both physical and conceptual. More precisely, it is about the pressure imposed on borders in a world that becomes more fluid and interconnected day by day. To state the obvious, borders are an artifice designed to both include and exclude.

In Arabic duty is described as waajib. Sabsabi's waajib dictates his responsibility to be fully committed and not to ignore the situations of the people around him. This commitment manifests across Sabsabi's work which continues to show the interconnectedness of everyday life with broader culture and politics.

MUSH is a blurring of humanity pointing towards the essence of life, the transitory yet repeating potential of existence. The deconstructed image-sound narratives become a means of restoring the idea of the universe's infinite potential.

War is ugly and yet, paradoxically, images do not necessarily make it so. From antiquity until now, scenes of war are embedded with an attractiveness that appeals to humanity's darker, more atavistic appetite. To take brush and paint to these intimately-scaled facsimiles of the real, as the artist does, is to both acknowledge this and attempt to re-order its depressing logic.

He spends an inordinate amount of time crafting, sharpening, working on these stitched visual tableaux. The physical and intellectual labour is induced through the spiritual. It becomes the medium where the soul is crafted into a state of divinity. This is where Khaled's artistic genius is imminently revealed.

He [Sabsabi] has also had extensive experience as a community advocate, curator and event organiser. He knows better than most the barriers that separate multicultural and community practices from the mainstream of art production and disseminationÑbarriers that are geographic, and cultural.

Using video screens, hip-hop music on blasting sound systems, especially constructed dance floors and rebuilt cars, Hip Hopera will be a collaborative event between DDT and the young people of the area - especially those from non-English-speaking backgrounds

His latest workshop, the 2168 Project, linking hip hop artists with about 30 youths from Green Valley, Liverpool and Miller in western Sydney, aims to channel this anger creatively and break down stereotypes about young people from non-English-speaking backgrounds. There is also a strong job skills component, with students from previous workshops landing jobs running street magazines, working in community radio and starting their own hip hop groups.

Where many of his contemporaries are seemingly self-satisfied in exploring shallow waters further limited in their navigation by their relatively myopic frames of cultural reference, taking as their concerns or absurdly ominous sounding 'interrogations' narrow subjects of social, historical or aesthetic inquiry, Sabsabi has continued to dive into deeper depths of the human experience, pursuing a very personal yet paradoxically resounding universal invocation of truth.

The piece takes much of its performative language from the sensuous, twining forms of Arabic calligraphy... Writing With The Hip initially breaks speech back into its syllabic elements, deliberately echoing children being taught language... Sounds become dance rhythms, too, helped by an excellent score from Khaled Sabsabi.

Sabsabi's interpretation of the Prophet is a transgressive view. It falls somewhere between being a respectful witness and an outsider to Islamic teaching. His is a continuum between these positions, a notion of the infinite bringing centuries of Sufism spirituality into the now.

Sabsabi's twenty years of practice as an artist and performer is a testament to his commitment to his community, his people and his love of the land. While the work has deep philosophical and spiritual concerns, the overall experience is immersive and musical, becoming neither didactic nor patriotic.

With the largest geographical area and the greatest number of countries, the continent is a complex region of political systems, diverse cultures, with a multitude of changes and expeditious development. It is perhaps inevitable that its progress will have an enormous influence on the stability, modification and transformation of global political and economic structures.

It's about their story, it's their experiences, this is what they want to do, this is what they want to say. And that varies from place to place, from person to personÉ it's about them documenting their stories, their experiences, the way that the want other people, or the public, or the world, to see them.

A visual artist, prolific sound producer and community cultural engagement producer at Casula Powerhouse, Sydney typifies the nexus of religious, cultural and artistic identities within a seamless web of complex art works that have garnered him most recently the prestigious Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship from the NSW Government.