Why I Refuse to Reproduce a Work of Art
Sometimes I receive a message that sounds something like this:
“ I would like exactly the same piece as the one you have already created."
For a long time, I couldn’t explain why this request made me uncomfortable.
Today, I think I understand.
It is not because I refuse to recreate a design. It is not because I am seeking exclusivity. It is because, deep down, this request always tells me the same story.
A story many of us are living.
We live in a world where everything seems as though it should be reproducible.
An image, an object, a trend, a vision of success, as if the value of something depended on its ability to be repeated.
And yet...
No meaningful encounter in our lives ever happens twice. No look, no conversation, no emotion.
So why should the way we create obey a logic that life itself refuses?
We spend a great part of our lives looking at what other people have.
Their success, their home, their body, their talent, their way of living.
And almost without realizing it, we begin to believe that their happiness lies in what they have, and that ours depends on our ability to resemble them.
I believe this is the moment when we begin to move away from ourselves.
We stop listening to our own truth. We forget that we already carry a story no one else will ever be able to tell.
Perhaps this is what touches me most when someone asks me to reproduce a work.
I don’t only hear:
“I want this piece.”
Sometimes, I hear someone who believes there is more beauty in someone else’s story than in their own.
As if their own experience were not enough. As if what makes them unique did not have enough value to deserve a work created in their image.
And that thought makes me deeply sad.
Because I am convinced that we already spend so much of our lives trying to become someone else.
So if even the work that enters our home tells someone else’s story...
When do we finally celebrate our own?
We spend our childhood simply being ourselves.
Then, as we grow older, we learn to compare ourselves, to adapt, to seek approval, to fit into boxes that were never made for us.
Little by little, we abandon what once made us magical.
And yet...
If each of us carries a different story, different wounds, different joys, different dreams, why should our works of art all look the same?
When someone entrusts me with a project, I don’t begin by looking for colours.
I don’t begin with a shape. I look for the person. I look for what makes them come alive. What brings them peace. What they may not yet dare to reveal.
Because I am convinced that a work should never tell someone else’s story.
It should reveal our own.
I could recreate the same shape, the same colours, the same textures.
Technically, nothing would prevent me from doing so. But I could never recreate what gave birth to the original work, because a work is born from a precise moment, a person, an emotion, a story that will never happen in exactly the same way again.
I would only be recreating its appearance, never its truth.
I don’t believe I am protecting rarity.
I believe I am protecting something far more precious:
Our uniqueness.
This conviction has always been with me.
That every human being is unique.
And that this uniqueness deserves to be celebrated rather than replaced.
Deep down...
I am not refusing to reproduce a work of art.
I am refusing to participate in a world that makes us believe we must resemble others in order to have value.
I would like every person who welcomes one of my works into their home to be able to look at it and think:
“This work could not have been created for anyone else.”
Because, just like their story...
It is unique.
Thank you for taking the time to read these words.
See you soon in the Journal d’Akou.
Every human being is a unique work of art.
Why should the work created for them resemble someone else’s?
— Ryslein Sakouni
And you…
Do you think something born from a unique story can ever truly be reproduced?
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