People want the signature because it feels like the final lock on the door. The proof. The stamp that says this is real, this is valuable, this is finished, this belongs to someone and therefore it can belong to you.
When someone asks me to sign my work, I hear more than a simple request. I hear a whole system speaking through it. I hear the marketplace. I hear the fear of fakes. I hear the need for certainty. I hear a desire for closeness that does not know how to ask for closeness without turning it into ownership. I hear someone saying, I want a part of you that I can hold.
And I understand that. I do not judge it. I just do not always agree to it.
Because my name has a strange relationship to my art. My name can open doors, but it can also become a cage. It can protect the work, but it can also distract from it. It can make people look, but it can also make people stop looking.
So I have learned to (un)sign my name.
To unsign does not mean I refuse responsibility. It does not mean I want to hide forever. It means I treat authorship as something living, not something stamped. It means I sometimes step away from the ritual that turns a work into a product and turns an artist into a guarantee.
Sometimes I sign, and it feels like a normal act. A human act. A small moment of recognition between maker and viewer. But other times, signing feels like surrendering something I still need. It feels like giving away the last quiet space where the work can remain unowned.
I started making art in 2021, and since then I have been learning the emotional cost of being legible. A signature makes you legible. It says, here is the person behind the work. Here is the fixed identity. Here is the final answer. It is comforting for people. Sometimes it is also comforting for me.
But I do not always want comfort. Sometimes I want truth.
And my truth is that my relationship with presence is complicated. My relationship with belonging is complicated. My relationship with communication is complicated. So why would my relationship with authorship be simple.
When people ask, what is your art, I want to answer honestly. My art is not only the object or the image or the installation. My art is also the conditions around it. The arrival and the withdrawal. The message and the silence. The invitation and the obstruction. The way I appear, the way I disappear. The way I let meaning come close, and then I let it slip away before it becomes a possession.
So if you want to understand how I unsign my name, you have to understand that my name is not only a label. My name is a doorway into expectations. Expectations of performance. Expectations of explanation. Expectations of constant availability.
Because once the name is written, people often want more than the work. They want the artist as a service.
They want the artist to respond quickly. They want the artist to explain the concept clearly. They want the artist to confirm the meaning. They want the artist to supply biography like a certificate. They want the artist to stay consistent so the story can stay stable. They want the artist to be present whenever the world demands it, like a light that never switches off.
And sometimes, I cannot live like that.
So I let the name fade. I let it become less central. I let it become uncertain. I let it be missing. I let it be delayed. I let it exist in a way that does not complete the work, but complicates it.
To unsign is to refuse the idea that the work needs my constant presence to be valid.
I think many people believe the signature is an intimate thing. A personal touch. A closeness. A proof that the artist once stood here. But I have also seen how signature becomes a chain. It can drag the work into a system that is hungry. A system that wants to buy not only the art but also the identity, the story, the exoticness, the category, the neat narrative.
Sometimes, especially as an African artist living in Europe, I feel the signature being pulled in different directions. The name becomes a magnet for other peoples ideas about what I should represent. What my work should perform. What pain I should display. What culture I should translate into something easy.
My refusal to sign, sometimes, is my refusal to be turned into evidence.
Because the signature can become a passport stamp. It can say, this work comes from Africa, this work comes from Europe, this work is authentic, this work is market ready, this work is safe to collect, safe to display, safe to frame within the institution.
And I am not always interested in safety.
Sometimes I want the work to remain dangerous in a quiet way. Not dangerous like violence. Dangerous like uncertainty. Dangerous like not being easily owned. Dangerous like a thought that does not settle.
When I unsign my name, I am giving the viewer a different kind of encounter. I am asking, can you stay with the work without immediately grabbing the comfort of the author. Can you sit with it without turning it into a story you can finish. Can you let it touch you without needing to possess it.
That is not cruelty. That is intimacy in another form.
Because there is a deeper question hiding under the request for a signature. The question is not only, is this yours. The question is also, are you here. Are you reachable. Are you going to answer me. Are you going to meet me.
And here is where I want to be very human about it.
I do want to meet you. I do want to be understood, sometimes. I do want connection. I am not a machine. I am not a myth. I am a person who makes things because he needs to. A person who feels too much sometimes. A person who becomes silent sometimes not because he is cold, but because he is trying to protect what is tender.
So when you ask, how to make me feel to communicate with you, I can answer with something simple, even if my practice is complex.
Make me feel like you are not trying to trap me.
Make me feel like you are not trying to extract a clean meaning from me like a resource.
Make me feel like you can accept a slow reply, a partial reply, a reply that does not solve everything.
Make me feel like your interest is not a demand.
Make me feel like you are willing to meet the work first, before you demand the artist.
When someone approaches me with patience, I soften. When someone approaches me with curiosity that is not hungry, I can speak. When someone approaches me and says, I do not fully understand, but I stayed with it, I felt something, I want to hear what you think, I feel respect. I feel safe enough to be present.
When someone approaches me like a transaction, I become distant. Not to punish them. To survive.
Because the signature can become a transaction too. It can become the moment where the work is no longer a living thing but a commodity sealed and certified. It can become the moment where my relationship to the work is reduced to a mark on a corner.
And yet, I am not against signing forever. I am not trying to disappear completely. I am trying to control the conditions under which my name enters the room.
So let me say it clearly.
If you want me to sign my art, do not ask first for my name. Ask first for my presence.
Ask, how are you. Ask, what are you making now. Ask, what is difficult for you. Ask, what is the work doing to you. Ask what the work is doing to me.
Because my signature, when it matters, is not ink. It is relationship.
I think about signing like this. There are two kinds of signatures.
One is a stamp. It says, this is mine, now it is yours. It finishes the exchange.
The other is a trace. It says, I was here with you for a moment. It does not finish the exchange. It opens it.
I want my signature to be a trace, not a stamp.
That is why I sometimes delay it. That is why I sometimes refuse it. That is why I sometimes give it in a different form. A note. A conversation. A gesture. A confirmation that happens privately, not publicly. A message that arrives after you have already lived with the work for a while.
Because I am interested in the space between the work and the claim.
I want to ask, what happens in that space. What happens when a person lives with the work without the immediate satisfaction of ownership. What happens when the work stays slightly unsealed, slightly unsettled. What happens when you cannot easily prove it to someone else, but you feel it is true.
That feeling is important to me. It is closer to faith than to proof. And I do not mean faith in a religious sense. I mean the human act of staying with something without needing instant certainty.
My art is built out of those spaces. The space where the message does not arrive. The space where the artist is not fully present. The space where belonging is not solved. The space where the viewer has to become a participant, not just a consumer.
So when will I be here for you to sign my art.
I will be here when the request is not a demand but an encounter.
I will be here when you have sat with the work long enough that the signature is not the main event.
I will be here when the signature does not feel like you are collecting my name more than you are collecting the work.
I will be here when I feel that my name will not be used to shrink the work into a simple story.
I will be here when the signature becomes a shared moment, not a purchase.
Sometimes that will be in a studio, quiet, with time. Sometimes it will be after an exhibition when the noise has settled. Sometimes it will be months later, when you return to me with a feeling that has grown. Sometimes it will never happen in ink, but it will happen in another way, like a confirmation that lives in a message between us.
And sometimes, I will sign, and you will be surprised how simple it is. Because my refusal is not absolute. It is emotional. It is contextual. It is about trust.
I have learned that the signature is not small. People treat it like a small thing, a quick mark, a polite detail. But it is actually a relationship to power. It is a relationship to the market. It is a relationship to identity. It is a relationship to being seen.
To sign is to place your name into a system that will move without you. That will circulate. That will be talked about. That will be categorized. That will be priced. That will be displayed in rooms you may never enter.
That is not nothing.
So sometimes I choose to keep my name closer to my body. Sometimes I choose to let the work travel without the name leading it like a flag. Sometimes I choose to let the work be found like a stone in a pocket, personal, unannounced.
Unsigning is not disappearance. It is control of presence.
It is me saying, my name is not the easiest way into my work. My name is not the handle. My name is not the key that opens everything.
If you want to enter, enter through attention.
Enter through feeling.
Enter through patience.
Enter through the willingness to be unsure.
If you do that, you will find me there, more than you would find me in a signature.
And when I do sign, it will not be because I was forced. It will be because I chose to be present. It will be because the work and the relationship could hold it without collapsing into a transaction.
My name, in my practice, is not a brand. It is a voice that appears and disappears. A voice that sometimes speaks loudly, sometimes whispers, sometimes stays silent. A voice that protects itself so it can keep making.
So yes, I (un)sign my name.
I do it because I want the work to remain alive.
I do it because I want the viewer to meet the work without using me as a shortcut.
I do it because I am learning how to be close without being owned.
And I do it because, when the moment is right, I still believe in the beauty of a human gesture.
A pen in the hand. A pause. A look. A shared recognition.
Not proof.
Not product.
Just a moment where we both admit, quietly, that something real happened here.