There's nothing shocking inherently about that, given that so much of the way that artists are taught is by copying old master paintings.

When I went to the Studio Museum in Harlem, there was a type of freedom that existed where I didn't have to think about professors, where I didn't have to think about much of anything other than my own practice.

So much of the hubris that surrounded conceptual art in the 1950s through '70s was that it had this arrogant presupposition that pointing in and of itself was a creative act. It never rigorously politically and socially analyzed the fact that the luxury to point is something that so many people throughout the world don't have.

For me, I wanted to create something that's much more driven by a type of selfishness, a type of decadence.

All art is self-portraiture.

I think it's really useful to create parameters. The term you use can be forwarded into something more like a grid, a rubric, a system that you apply to all environments, and in so doing you create a situation in which you can locate local color, local differences within new environments.

You'll find that street casting in America is a lot different than street casting in different nations.