I've met others [people] who simply responded to me, "You're Kehinde Wiley. I know your work. I saw it at the Brooklyn Museum [Brooklyn, NY] And I'd be honored to be in your work."

How does the artist function as poet-slash-witness-slash-trickster?

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

The artists ultimately respond to the public.

I began working within the streets of Harlem, where, after graduating from Yale [University, New Haven, CT], I became the artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem [New York, NY]. I wanted to know what that was about. I would actually pull people from off of the streets and ask them to come to my studio.

I love the flexibility of saying, "Today we're making 50-foot paintings, and we're going to have to join hands and figure out how that's going to work." But in the end, it's a possibility.

There is something to be said about laying bare the vocabulary of the aristocratic measure, right? There's something to be said about allowing the powerless to tell their own story.