I started making art in 2021, and almost immediately I learned something about myself: I can’t stay in one place for long, not in the way the art world expects you to stay.
People say, “Build a presence.” “Be consistent.” “Show your face.” “Post regularly.” “Tell your story.” And I understand why they say it. Visibility is currency now. If people can’t find you, they assume you don’t exist. If you don’t keep speaking, they assume you have nothing to say.
But I’m not built for that kind of staying. I make work, and then I disappear. Not because I’m careless. Not because I’m trying to be mysterious. Because something in me needs to leave the room after I put the work inside it.
Disappearing is not an extra thing I do on the side. It’s part of how I make art.
Since 2021, I’ve created social media accounts the way some people open studio doors, carefully, with intention, with a little hope. I set them up, choose the name, choose the image, post the work, try to let people in. For a moment, I’m “there.” People can follow. People can watch. People can message. People can ask questions. People can decide who I am.
And then, suddenly or slowly, I vanish.
Sometimes it’s after a few months. Sometimes it’s a few weeks. Sometimes it’s only a few days. I delete the account or I abandon it. The last post just sits there, like a sentence that never got finished. No warning. No explanation. Just absence.
I know what that looks like from the outside. It looks unstable. It looks like I don’t care. It looks like I’m playing games.
But from inside my own body, it feels different. It feels like relief.
Because being visible online is not just “showing your work.” It’s being available to be consumed. It’s being turned into a profile. It’s being reduced into a version of yourself that the algorithm can understand and the audience can recognize. Every day, the platform asks for proof: prove you’re still here, prove you’re still producing, prove you’re still worth looking at.
Sometimes I can do it for a while. I can participate. I can be present. I can communicate.
And then something in me rejects it. Something says: leave before they think they own you.
When I disappear, I’m not saying I’m above people. I’m saying I’m trying to save something. I’m trying to protect the part of my practice that doesn’t survive constant observation. The most honest part of my work is quiet. It doesn’t like bright light. It doesn’t want to explain itself every day. It doesn’t want to be turned into content.
So I step back. I shut the door. I let the work exist without me standing next to it like an employee assigned to it.
And then there’s the other part: the curatorial teams.
I’ve built teams to help me show my work. I’ve asked people to help me organize, to display, to translate my ideas into a public form. Sometimes I’m excited, because collaboration can feel like breathing. It can feel like I’m not alone with my thoughts. It can feel like the work is becoming real in the world.
But then I do something that confuses people: I tell them to communicate it… and then I tell them not to.
I’ll say, “Let’s announce it.” Then I’ll say, “Wait.”
I’ll say, “Share it.” Then I’ll say, “Don’t share it.”
I’ll say, “Make it public.” Then I’ll say, “Keep it quiet.”
And sometimes it goes further. I want a new team. A different structure. A different voice. A different arrangement of trust. And sometimes I want nothing at all. I shut the entire plan down. I disappear from the conversation. I let the project dissolve. I let the team feel the emptiness where the “artist” was supposed to be.
I’m not proud of the pain that can cause. I know it can disappoint people. It can waste energy. It can make me seem impossible.
But it’s honest to say: this is also part of the work.
Because my art is not only about what I show. It’s about what I refuse to make easy. It’s about how visibility works, and how it hurts, and how it controls. It’s about the pressure to be clear, to be accessible, to be consistent, to be “professional,” even when your spirit isn’t built for a straight line.
I’m drawn to the edge of things: the edge of saying and not saying. The edge of being present and being gone. The edge of wanting connection and wanting privacy. My art lives in that edge. So my life as an artist also ends up living there.
Sometimes I think my disappearance is a kind of truth-telling.
Because the world doesn’t really want “you.” It wants a version of you that it can predict. A version that will show up on schedule. A version that will always be available for questions, for interviews, for captions, for statements, for explanations. It wants you to be a stable product.
But I am not stable in that way. My mind moves. My emotions change. My trust changes. My relationship to the work changes. Sometimes I feel brave. Sometimes I feel exposed. Sometimes I feel ready to share. Sometimes I feel like sharing turns the work into something smaller than it is.
So when I disappear, I’m not only withdrawing; I’m insisting that the work is not a performance of my availability.
There’s something else too, something more personal.
Disappearing can be a response to fear.
When I post work online, it can feel like I’m putting my skin on the table. People stare. People judge. People misunderstand. People project their own stories onto me. People can praise you in a way that still feels like they’re taking something. They can insult you in a way that lives inside your chest for weeks.
Sometimes I can hold that. Sometimes I can’t.
So I leave.
Not dramatically, just quietly, like turning off a light and sitting in the dark. I don’t always know how to explain it while it’s happening. I just know I need to remove myself from the machine.
And the strange thing is: when I vanish, the work doesn’t disappear.
It stays in people’s phones as screenshots. It stays in conversations. It becomes half-memory, half-rumor. Someone says, “I saw something from him once,” and that sentence becomes a kind of exhibition space. The absence creates a shadow, and the shadow becomes part of the work’s shape.
That’s the part people don’t always understand: disappearing is not “nothing.” It is a form. It is a material. It is an atmosphere I place around the work so that the work can be felt differently.
If I stay visible too long, people stop looking at the work and start looking at me. They start asking for the person instead of the piece. They start wanting the story, the identity, the certainty. And I get it; we are human, we crave context. But I’m interested in what happens when that craving doesn’t get fed.
What happens when you have to sit with the work without the artist’s voice holding your hand?
What happens when the artwork doesn’t come with a stable profile picture and a daily statement?
What happens when the artist slips away and leaves you alone with your own response?
For me, that loneliness is not punishment. It’s intimacy. It’s the purest meeting: you, the work, and whatever it stirs up in you, without the noise of performance.
This is also why my relationship with curatorial teams becomes complicated. A team often wants clarity. They want a plan. They want consistency. They want a message that can be repeated. That’s their job, and I respect it.
But my work doesn’t always want to be repeated.
Sometimes the work needs to be shown once and then removed. Sometimes it needs to be announced and then withdrawn. Sometimes it needs to exist in a half-state: not fully public, not fully private. Like a door that stays slightly open, just enough for air to move.
So I build teams, and I also test the limits of the team. Not because I enjoy control. But because the entire system of art depends on communication, on statements, captions, press releases, documentation, interviews, and I’m trying to see what remains when those things are unstable.
I’m trying to see if the work can still breathe when the megaphone is turned off.
Sometimes I think of myself as an artist who makes entrances, not monuments.
A monument wants to be permanent. It wants to say, “I will always be here.”
An entrance can be closed. An entrance can move. An entrance can disappear.
My accounts are entrances. My teams are entrances. My projects are entrances. And I close them when I feel the space behind them is being invaded, misunderstood, or turned into a product.
If you look for me and you can’t find me, it doesn’t mean I stopped making work. It might mean I’m closer to the work than ever.
It might mean I’m protecting it.
It might mean I’m protecting myself.
Because I’m still learning, since 2021, since the beginning, how to be an artist in a world that demands constant proof of existence. I’m still learning how to share without being swallowed. I’m still learning how to communicate without being captured.
So yes: I create accounts and I disappear. I create teams and I undo them. I announce and I retract. I approach and I retreat. I appear and I vanish.
This is not a branding strategy. This is a spiritual rhythm.
This is how I survive the gaze.
This is how I keep my work from becoming a performance of obedience.
This is how I keep my identity from being simplified into something easy for others to hold.
I don’t disappear because I have nothing to say.
I disappear because what I’m trying to say can’t always live in a place that never stops talking.
And when I return, when I choose to return, I return with the same question that has been with me since 2021:
Can the work still be real if I refuse to be constantly seen?