Thank You For Believing in Me is based on a common signage in Singapore, designed to ward off trespassers from prohibited areas. You can find them on fences around the Singapore-Malaysia border control/customs check, for example.

My first encounter with the signage was during a visit to Fort Canning in 2018. While admiring the neatly labelled nature and impeccably maintained park, I could not refrain my eyes from being enchanted by a red block of colour adorned with precise typography of various scripts. Reinforcing the function of the sign is this central image within a white outline: a man in a hat points his rifle at an unarmed man with his arms raised.

My intention here is to create an alternative version of the sign catered for the art world, demarcating a self-contained space that is safe and liberating, for artists alike to express their ideas and concerns in a democratic way.

Unlike the original sign, the sentences I have placed are not translations of each other. Instead, they offer bespoke advice identifying with the concerns of each demographic: in Malay, I have posed that the artist should follow demands and not pretend to be intelligent, but make art only within one's level of expertise (for example, in cultural knowledge or technical capabilities); the Mandarin script offers an illusion of choice and the demand to be critical in making that decision; in Tamil, an acceptance of a forced reality and to be thankful for recognition and for what has been given.

Izat Arif, 2020