There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist.

Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation.

At age 20 I went to go find my father in Nigeria. And after much toil, I finally figured out exactly where he was. And there's something about seeing your father for the first time - my mother destroyed all pictures of him.

In our conversations, he [Michael Jackson] revealed a surprising understanding of art history. We were going through the finer points of the difference between one Italian sculptor to the next. You know, this - these are things that we don't necessarily assume of people in sanctified light.

I love the idea of engaging religious sentiment and how that vocabulary has evolved over time.

[My twin brother] he was the star artist of the family as we - as we were growing up. He eventually lost interest and went more towards literature and then medicine and then business and so on. But for me it became something that I did well. And it felt great being able to make something look like something.

I mean, the radical contingency that is - that exists and the fact that I'm going into the streets and finding random strangers any given day - who's in these streets that day?