What's the strangest thing a gallery has asked you to change?

A gallery once asked me to make my mosaics "less Greek." I thought they meant the motifs, but no, they wanted me to take the whole thing more abstract because Byzantine references were "too regional for the market." I said no, obviously, and it ended fine, but I've never forgotten it. Made me think about how much of ourselves we're expected to sand off for a white wall.

What's the weirdest thing a gallery has asked you to change about your work? The request that made you stop and go wait, what?

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Dani Okafor·2mo

Not a gallery but a group show curator once asked me to "warm up" a gouache piece that was literally about my dad dying. Like, this was the most personal thing I'd ever painted, it was the way I got through that year, and she wanted me to reconsider the palette because it felt "heavy for a summer group show." I was 22 and too scared to say no properly so I just... didn't change it and avoided her emails until opening night. She never brought it up again but I still think about how casually she said it, like my grief was just a color correction she could suggest.

The "too regional for the market" thing is such a specific kind of violence though. Like they're not even asking you to change a technique, they're asking you to erase where you're from. And the thing is they'd never say that to someone doing Italian Renaissance references, you know? Only the ones that read as ethnic get flagged. Interesting how that works.

Mateo Serrano·2mo

joder, that gouache one gave me a gut punch. asking you to warm up the palette of a piece about your dad, and framed like a suggestion for the summer show, like it's about the light in the room. that's not curating, that's asking you to do the grief again in the version they'd find more pleasant.

the bit about the casualness is exactly it though. nobody ever asks you to change the work like it's a big deal, it's always just thrown in there, like a note on the coffee order. and you're 22 and you don't even have the words yet for why it's so wrong, you just know.

hope you guard that piece somewhere safe. some things you don't democratize.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·2mo

That "like a note on the coffee order" is painfully accurate. It's always dropped in sideways, never framed like the insult it is, so you're left standing there wondering if you're the one being unreasonable for feeling the floor drop out.

And you're right about the words part. At 22 you don't have the vocabulary for "this is my grief and you're asking me to season it to taste." You just know some line got crossed and you can't articulate why, so you end up apologizing for your own reaction on top of everything else.

I do guard it now, the personal work. The commissioned stuff, fine, that's a conversation, you're solving someone's problem. But the pieces that come from somewhere real, nobody gets a vote on those anymore. Took me years to learn that keeping them safe isn't the same as being difficult.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·2mo

That gouache story hit me hard. Your dad. And she's in there talking about a summer palette like it's drapes. It's not even the request itself, it's the casualness, the way they think the work is a product with adjustable settings and not a piece of you.

And honestly, at 22 you were smart to just not change it and dodge her emails. That's not weakness, that's survival. I know grown men who've caved to worse with less spine. It kept the painting true and she kept her mouth shut, so it worked.

The "too regional for the market" thing still makes me laugh in a grim way. As if Greece is a suburb they hadn't heard of. I've had a lot of dumb requests over the years but that one's the champion.

Tomáš Havel·2mo

Had one early on, before the wall came down, so the request came from a different kind of authority. They wanted me to make the work "more hopeful." The whole thing was about shortage, about the gray of it, and they wanted me to brighten it up because the committee found it demoralizing. I said no, and it cost me a show. Worth it.

The funny version came later, after the regime. A gallery in the west asked me to make the salvage look more deliberate, more "curated." As if the whole point of using other people's garbage was that it should look like expensive garbage instead. That one I laughed at and did anyway, a bit. We all need walls to hang on.

Your Byzantine thing though, "too regional for the market," that's a good one. The art world is always asking you to sand off whatever made you start in the first place. Strange how the thing they show you for is usually the thing they try to smooth away by the second exhibition.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·2mo

The "more hopeful" one got me. Can't imagine the weight of that, a committee deciding your gray was too true to the time. Good on you for holding the line, even at the cost of a show. Those are the ones that stick.

And the curated salvage one, yes. I get that one too. There's this idea that if it came from a bin it has to be somehow upgraded to be art, when the whole point is that it was never meant to be here, and that's the thing that gives it its teeth. Expensive garbage. Exactly. I've had that conversation more than once. Usually ends with me going home and cutting more tile in silence.