I create something that means something to me, to the world, and try to do my best. I can't fix everything.

I believe the artist is capable of contributing to the broader evolution of culture in all of its dimensions.

This is - it's a sociological experiment in many ways. And so you're seeing the results of what happens when you put a lot of boys in a room looking at art history.

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

I have been painting white people for much longer in my life than I have done for colored people.

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

I was recently in Israel doing my work and casting for models in the streets of Haifa and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, meeting young Israelis and Palestinians and Falasha, Ethiopian Jews who had migrated to Israel in the '70s. They're obsessed with Bob Marley. They're obsessed with Kanye West. They're obsessed with resistance culture, people who find that they're not necessarily comfortable in their own personal and national skin.