I just submitted a few photos to a UNESCO-sponsored contest themed on water and water storage. I don’t usually participate in photography contests and though I have won a few, when I do partake, it always gives me pause. Why should I compete with my art? After all, art is one of the most subjective experiences we have as humans. What warms me might leave someone else cold. What’s “good” or “bad” depends on taste, context, knowledge, and even mood. How, then, can anyone judge, let alone decide, what good art is? Sure, you can assess technical skill, but that’s only a fraction of what makes art resonate or not resonate. The connection, the emotion and the ideas art sparks are things that can’t be measured or compared.

When we treat art as a competition, I think we reduce it. It stops being about expression and instead becomes about metrics: who sold the most? Who got the award? Who has the most followers? Numbers are fleeting, disconnected from the deeper purpose of art, which I think is to explore, provoke, and connect. And then there’s the risk of suppression. Competition has a way of discouraging experimentation, especially for young or unconventional artists. If the goal is to win, why take risks? Why push boundaries or create something raw and unpolished if it might not be “good enough” to win? Art flourishes in freedom, not fear.

The bottom line is that competing with art is largely meaningless. It distracts from the real essence of what art is and why it matters. Art isn’t about being better than someone else; it’s about saying something truthfully, and hopefully inspiring others to feel what you felt while making it. If competition plays a role at all, it’s indirect – a way to shine a light on what’s possible, to nudge younger artists toward their potential. But the moment we turn art into a numbers game, we lose sight of what makes it powerful in the first place. And that, at least to me, defeats the purpose.