Where Is the Art? Artefact vs. Experience in Contemporary Practice
Is art the object; the canvas, the wall, the painted form? Or is it the moment something stirs within the viewer? Is it the thing, or the encounter with the thing?
This question has shaped centuries of artistic debate, but it’s more relevant than ever; especially in a world where art increasingly lives outside traditional frames, in streets, in screens, in fleeting experiences. For muralists and street artists, this tension is constant: you create something fixed, but its meaning remains fluid, changing with weather, city noise, the pace of a passerby, or the memory of a glance.
Perhaps art is not in the artefact alone. Perhaps the true artwork exists somewhere in-between. A space of perception, dialogue, and presence.
The Object as Offering, Not Endpoint
In classical traditions, the artwork, the object, was the focus. It held value in its craftsmanship, permanence, and authorship. Art was a thing: a sculpture, a painting, a relic. Something to be owned, preserved, and displayed.
But by the 20th century, artists and philosophers began to challenge this idea.
John Cage, one of the most radical thinkers of modern art and music, famously asserted that “Art is not something that is in a museum. It is the experience that takes place in time and space.” His piece 4’33”, in which the performer remains silent and the ambient sounds of the environment become the “music,” shattered the assumption that art must be composed. Instead, he suggested: art emerges through attention.
In Cage’s world, art wasn’t a product, it was a frame for noticing.
The Art of the Encounter
Many contemporary theorists echo this idea. Philosopher Jacques Rancière argued that the “aesthetic regime of art” depends not on objects, but on how those objects reconfigure our perception of the sensible world.
In other words, art happens when we see differently. When we are disrupted, attuned, awakened. The artefact is the catalyst, but the artwork is the experience it generates.
Installation artist Olafur Eliasson often says, “The work of art does not exist in the object alone, but in the space between the viewer and the object.” This is particularly resonant in public art, where no one experience is the same. A mural on a city wall may be ignored by one person and life-altering for another; simply because they were ready to see.
Street Art as Experiential Practice
This philosophy finds its purest expression in street art.
Unlike the gallery, the street does not frame the viewer’s attention, it competes with it. Street art must be found, glanced at, and returned to. It exists in the real world, amidst errands, emotions, and bus routes. It is not protected by curation or context, and yet, it often moves people in the most unexpected ways.
When I create murals, I think about this constantly. I may design forms that feel intentional, composed, grounded. But I know that the artwork is not fully mine. It belongs to the street, to the light of the day, to the footsteps that pass beneath it, to the person who pauses, if only for a moment, to see it.
The painted surface is static, but the meaning is dynamic. It lives in time.
Artefact or Experience? The Answer Is Both and Neither
So where is the art?
It’s tempting to say: in the object and the experience. But perhaps more truthfully, the art is in the tension between the two. It is in the moment the object disappears and the awareness begins.
This isn’t to diminish the artefact. It is still vital; it carries intention, gesture, material presence. But the artefact is not the whole story. It’s the invitation.
The real artwork? It’s in the pause. The shift in breath. The sensation of recognition. The quiet dialogue between form and memory, colour and thought, place and self.
Art as a Liminal Space
As a muralist, I create in public. But I do not control how the work is received. That’s part of the beauty. The wall holds the form. But the artwork lives in the in-between.
In a world of objects and distractions, perhaps what we need most from art is not more things, but more moments of seeing. More spaces where the world feels unfamiliar, just long enough for us to truly notice it.
Because the most powerful artworks aren’t the ones we look at, they’re the ones that look back.