People often come to art with a hunger that looks polite.
They say they want to understand. They say they want context. They say they want to know what the work means. They say they want the story behind it, the intention, the message, the explanation that will help them feel sure they are seeing it correctly.
I know that hunger. I have it too, sometimes, when I stand in front of someone else’s work. I do not think it is wrong to want understanding.
But I have learned something important about that hunger. It can turn into possession very quickly.
Sometimes the request for meaning is not really a request. It is a demand. A demand that the work become easy. A demand that the artist become available. A demand that the artwork behave like a polite object that can be translated into a sentence, filed away, and repeated to others.
My work does not live comfortably inside that demand.
So I learned three practices that look like problems to people who prefer certainty.
I (with)hold meaning.
I (mis)behave.
I (un)document.
These are not tricks. They are not games. They are ways of protecting what is real in my practice, and ways of telling the truth about how power moves through art.
Because meaning can be a form of power.
Behavior can be a form of power.
Documentation can be a form of power.
And I want to be honest about that, emotionally honest, not theoretical, not distant. Honest like a person who has been misunderstood enough times to become careful with language.
How I (with)hold meaning
Withholding meaning is not the same as having no meaning.
It means I do not give you the whole thing in the way you expect. I do not always explain. I do not always confirm. I do not always provide the sentence that makes the work feel safe.
I do this for a simple reason. Meaning can be stolen.
When you explain too clearly, your words can become a tool for other people. People can lift your statement out of context, repeat it, and use it to control the reading of your work. Institutions can use your own language to frame you. Audiences can use your own language to trap you in a single narrative. Even supporters can do this without realizing it. They think they are helping, but they are also fixing you in place.
I have watched how quickly people stop looking once they think they have the answer.
As soon as the meaning is delivered, the artwork becomes solved. And once it is solved, it becomes smaller. It becomes something you can own.
I am interested in work that stays alive. And living things do not want to be solved.
So I hold back.
Sometimes I hold back because the work is fragile. Some meanings are not meant to be shouted. Some meanings are personal in a way that needs privacy. Some meanings are still forming. Some meanings can only be felt, not translated.
If I explain too soon, I feel like I am killing the work while it is still breathing.
And there is another reason, a more emotional one.
Withholding meaning is how I protect myself from being reduced.
When you are asked again and again to define yourself, to represent, to clarify, to speak on demand, you start to feel like your inner life is a resource. Something people can extract. Something people can take without caring what it costs you.
Withholding meaning is me saying, I am not a resource.
It is also me saying, I want you to meet the work, not just the story.
Because the truth is, meaning is not only in the artist. Meaning is also in the viewer. Meaning happens in the space between us. It is created by attention, memory, mood, history, desire, fear. When I over explain, I block that space. I become a loud voice in the room that tells you what to feel.
I do not want to control you that way.
I want to invite you. I want you to come close in your own way.
So I might give you a small piece and keep the rest.
I might offer a sentence that opens instead of a sentence that closes.
I might speak about the method but not the interpretation. I might speak about the feeling but not the conclusion. I might speak about the question but not the answer.
Sometimes I do this because I want to see who you are.
The way a person approaches meaning tells me how they approach other people.
If you approach my work gently, with patience, I feel safe. If you approach it with a demand for immediate clarity, I feel the pressure of a system that wants the world to be simple.
I do not live in simplicity. My work does not live there either.
So yes, I withhold meaning.
Not to punish you. To keep the encounter honest.
Because sometimes what is most meaningful cannot be carried in a neat sentence. It has to be carried in the body. In silence. In time. In the way something stays with you after you leave.
How I (mis)behave
Misbehaving, in my practice, is not about chaos for its own sake.
It is about refusing a script.
The art world has scripts. The institution has scripts. The professional relationship has scripts. The artist role has scripts.
How you should speak.
How you should present.
How you should follow timelines.
How you should make things easy for the system.
Some of these scripts are useful. They create structure. They allow collaboration.
But some scripts are also control.
They are designed to make the artist manageable. Predictable. Clean.
My work is not clean in that way. My inner life is not clean in that way. My relationship to visibility, to explanation, to identity, is not clean in that way.
So I misbehave.
Sometimes I misbehave very quietly. Quiet misbehavior is my favorite. Because it does not look like rebellion, but it changes the whole room.
Quiet misbehavior can be as simple as refusing to speak when everyone expects a speech. It can be choosing not to stand next to the work like a salesperson. It can be letting the work sit there without comfort.
Sometimes it is in how I collaborate.
A curator might want a clean narrative and a clean plan. I might give them a plan, and then I might change it. Not because I want to waste anyone’s time, but because the work itself changes when it meets the world. And I refuse to pretend it does not.
I have learned that institutions love certainty. They love schedules. They love final decisions that can be printed and archived. They want the artist to behave like a stable element in a stable machine.
But I am not a stable element. I am a person. I have doubt. I have shifts. I have moments where I realize something is wrong and I cannot continue just because the calendar says continue.
So sometimes my misbehavior is simply listening to my own integrity instead of the deadline.
That can make people angry. I know that.
And I do not romanticize the damage that can happen when others are involved. I do not want to harm people. I do not want to treat collaborators as disposable.
What I want is a different kind of relationship, one where the institution understands that the artist is not an employee whose job is to behave. The artist is a person whose job is to make something true.
Truth can be inconvenient.
So I misbehave to protect truth.
Sometimes I misbehave by refusing the polite performance of gratitude.
I am grateful for opportunities, yes. But I am wary of gratitude when it becomes a leash. When it becomes a tool to silence critique. When it becomes a requirement to accept bad treatment.
Sometimes the institution gives you space, and then it expects obedience in return. It expects you to be easy. It expects you to not question the frame.
My misbehavior is the refusal of that exchange.
I will accept space, and I will still keep my boundaries. I will still protect the work from being flattened. I will still protect my voice from being used as decoration.
Another way I misbehave is by making the process visible in the wrong places.
People expect art to happen on walls. I sometimes let it happen in emails, in meetings, in the confusion of planning, in the awkward conversations about permissions and policies and budgets.
Because those spaces are where power lives. Those spaces decide what can be shown and what cannot. Those spaces decide who is heard and who is ignored.
When I misbehave, I am often pointing at those invisible structures.
I am saying, look, the system is part of the artwork. Look, the room is not neutral. Look, the institution is not just a container, it is an active force.
This is why some people call it difficult.
But I call it honest.
Because if you have ever felt unseen, you know that visibility is not only a personal matter. It is structural. It is controlled. It is negotiated.
My misbehavior is me refusing to pretend that we are all free inside the white room.
Sometimes I misbehave by not giving the institution what it wants most.
A neat statement. A clean biography. A simple explanation. A stable image of the artist.
I do not always provide that.
Not because I hate the institution, but because I do not want to be owned by its hunger.
Misbehavior, for me, is a form of self respect.
It is also a form of care for the work.
Because if I behave perfectly, the work can become a product that fits too comfortably. It can become another object that passes through the system without disturbing anything.
And I am not interested in work that passes through without disturbing anything.
I want the disturbance to be subtle, but real. I want people to notice their own expectations. I want them to feel the gap between what they want from art and what art might actually be.
How I (un)document
Documentation is supposed to be neutral. It is supposed to be proof. It is supposed to help the work travel. It is supposed to preserve.
But I do not think documentation is neutral.
Documentation chooses what to show and what to hide. It chooses angle, framing, sequence, caption, context. It turns a living encounter into a record. It makes a moment into a file.
And files are powerful.
A file can outlive the work.
A file can replace the work.
A file can become the work in the eyes of people who never encountered it.
This is why I practice undocumenting.
Undocumenting does not always mean there is no documentation. It means the documentation does not behave.
It does not deliver the work cleanly. It does not complete the experience. It does not satisfy the hunger for proof.
Sometimes I release only fragments. A corner of an image. A detail that does not explain the whole. A photograph that is too close or too far. A video that ends early. A caption that refuses clarity.
Sometimes I let documentation arrive late, when it can no longer function as advertising.
Because advertising is what documentation often becomes. A way to sell the work before it is met.
I do not want my practice to be driven by promotional images. I do not want to create for the camera. I do not want the work to be judged by how well it translates into a rectangle on a screen.
So I remove that pressure by breaking the documentation.
Sometimes I do this because I want to protect the physical experience.
A photograph can lie. Even a good photograph can lie. It can flatten scale, erase texture, erase silence, erase time. It can make the work look like a simple object when in reality the work is the atmosphere around it.
If I document too cleanly, people think they have seen it. They stop being curious. They stop making the effort to encounter it in real space, in real time.
So I undocument to keep the encounter alive.
Sometimes I undocument because documentation can be dangerous for the artist.
When you release too much, you become too traceable. Too predictable. Too available. People feel entitled to you. They treat you like you owe them constant access.
Undocumenting is a boundary. It is me saying, you cannot collect every part of me.
And sometimes I undocument because I want to honor the people involved.
Not every collaboration should be broadcast. Not every moment should become content. Not every space should be photographed and shared.
There is a dignity in privacy. There is a dignity in letting some encounters remain unrecorded.
I know this goes against the current culture. Everything is documented now. Everything is posted. Everything becomes proof of existence.
But I am not interested in proving myself constantly. I am interested in living the work.
So I let some things disappear.
I let some exhibitions remain mostly in memory. I let some conversations remain between the people who were there. I let some projects exist as rumors. I let the work become an afterimage instead of a file.
And yes, that can frustrate people.
People want receipts. They want archives. They want a complete record. They want to know what happened, when, where, and how to verify it.
But part of my practice is asking, why do we need verification to feel something is real.
Why is the archive treated as truth.
Why is the document treated as more trustworthy than the living encounter.
Why do we require proof in a space that is supposed to be about feeling, perception, and imagination.
Undocumenting is my way of resisting that demand.
It is my way of saying, you can not reduce my work to a portfolio. You can not reduce my practice to a set of images that behave like trophies.
Because trophies are about ownership.
My work is not a trophy.
How these hold each other
Withholding meaning, misbehaving, and undocumenting are not separate habits. They hold each other.
When I withhold meaning, I resist being captured by a simple narrative.
When I misbehave, I resist being trained into obedience.
When I undocument, I resist being turned into a file.
All three are forms of refusal, but they are also forms of care.
Care for the work, so it does not become a dead object.
Care for the viewer, so they can have a real encounter instead of a packaged one.
Care for myself, so I can keep making without being swallowed by demands.
I want to be very clear about something. I do not do these things because I hate people. I do not do these things because I think audiences are stupid. I do not do these things because I want to be inaccessible for the sake of status.
I do them because I am sensitive.
Because I know what it feels like to be reduced.
Because I know what it feels like when your words are taken and used to define you.
Because I know what it feels like when the system asks for your story but does not want your complexity.
So I protect complexity.
I protect it with silence.
I protect it with shifts.
I protect it with incomplete records.
This protection is not a wall. It is a filter.
It is a way of letting in the people who can approach with patience and respect, and letting the rest slide off.
If you meet my work and you feel frustrated, I do not automatically blame you. Frustration can be part of the encounter. It can show you what you expected. It can show you where you want control.
If you meet my work and you feel drawn in, even without full clarity, then we are in the same room together. We are sharing the real thing.
Because the real thing is not always explainable.
The real thing is often incomplete.
The real thing often does not leave a clean record.
That is why I do what I do.
I (with)hold meaning because some meanings must stay alive, not solved.
I (mis)behave because my work is not a polite object, and I am not a polite machine.
I (un)document because the camera and the archive are not neutral, and I refuse to let a file become my truth.
In the end, these practices are a way of saying something very human.
I want to be encountered, not consumed.
I want to be understood, but not owned.
I want my work to travel, but not as a product that loses its soul on the way.
So I leave gaps.
I leave unfinished edges.
I leave silences that you have to sit with.
And if you can sit with them, if you can approach without demanding that everything be handed to you neatly, then the work opens.
Not all at once. Not completely. But enough.
Enough to feel something real.
Enough to know you are not just looking at an object, you are standing inside a living question. That is how I (with)hold meaning, (mis)behave, and (un)document.