Why do you want me to niche so bad?

Artists are constantly applying to different opportunties. If you don't have means of funding, you are at the mercy of granting bodies, non-for-profit arts programs, and private art opportunities. This is the way us young folk tend to do things in Toronto. The fine art world feels very far away for me. Even as I explored galleries and learned about represented artists, I felt that I'm no where close to doing that in my career. Or I feel like I don't have enough photos that people want to put on their walls. OR, what I find the most, is that young photographers in Toronto are creating art off of service based work for other people. For me it's the music industry.  A lot of us, including myself, take most of our photos of people. Whether that's portraits or street photography. A person can easily make an image interesting. But do people necessarily want to pay thousands of dollars for that and put it on their wall as a statement? Maybe yes, maybe no. I don't know if I would be as quick to put a picture of someone on my wall versus a picture of a flower. I say this because I just got a gifted a print of a flower illustration today. I immediately thought hmm, I'm gonna frame this and put it on my wall. And then it got damaged in the rain. So now idk anymore. Anyways, the past few years, I've been thinking about this;

Who determines the value of our art? Where does it's value increase? Who is actually willing to buy our art in physical form? Not our art as a service, but as it exists as itself.

This leads me to, why do I have to have a cohesive portfolio? Can I not just show you the sickest work I made and you can know that I make good work? What do these programs even want to see? I just got rejected from one of the city's art programs. It's my second year applying. Their feedback is that my portfolio is not cohesive. Last year in the portfolio review, they told me that I should include process work. This year I took the process work out of my portfolio. They didn't say anything about that. But they want me to present a portfolio that shows the diversification of my skills. I included my wheatpasting work, my prints in a frame I made from leaves I made in México, I showed my collage work showcased in PAMA, I showed my cover art work, a conceptual photoshoot, and a clean action shot from a concert. The range was crazy. I've received so many rejection emails, none of which I've sweat too tough. This is the only one I asked for feedback on, because I saw that that's an option on their website. Now I'm cheesed. Why would it be cohesive? You asked to demonstrate my range. You didn't ask for a series! You asked for range! I'm getting annoyed. I'm 24 now, so I will soon start aging out of these youth programs. I represented my artist statement in my portfolio. What do they want? If I said I give a voice to underrepresented communities and choose to represent my culture because representation is sooo important, I'm sure they would have loved that. Woe is me woe is me I'm a child of immigrants, queer POC with multiple mental health diagnosis, low income, low this, underprivileged that. I'm so annoyed right now. Sorry this is my first blog post, but I had to get it off my chest. I'm still figuring out my website. I can't put custom code in here with the plan I got, so I'm trying to figure out how I can embed things that people will actually click on. Thanks for listening,