I don't think that my work is actually effectively dealing with history. I think of my work as subsumed by history or consumed by history.

Sugar crystallizes something in our American Soul. It is emblematic of all Industrial Processes. And of the idea of becoming white. White Being equated with pure and ‘true’ it takes a lot of energy to turn brown things into white things. A lot of pressure.

If you're a Black artist, you could paint a wall of smiley faces, and someone will still ask you, 'Why are you so angry?'

The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that's also what the stereotype does.

I don't think that my work is actually effectively dealing with history. I think of my work as subsumed by history or consumed by history.

A lot of my work has been about the unexpected—that kind of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time. That kind of dilemma—that push and pull—is the underlying turbulence that I bring to each of the pieces that I make.

Silhouettes are reductions, and racial stereotypes are also reductions of actual human beings.