I always made stuff but never thought, I'm going to be an artist.

If power is abstraction, which many black men, black women, and people of color have very little voice in, well, then I want to sit at the table.

The most important imperative to be questioned is the one that tells you to go the the art supply store to be a painter.

A Scorpio, it's just about peeling back the layers. And I'm always surprised at myself-there's a lot under there.

My art practice is very detail-, labor- intensive and I think that that's a way of slowing myself down so that I can hear myself think. That quieter voice has sometimes the more interesting idea, if I can get to it.

That's how I am and how I've always looked at the world. I understood what the pavilions were before I came to Venice, and I knew that wasn't going to be enough for me. I wanted to extend this conversation into something I call urgency. There is urgency with people in crisis. Some communities - often the black community - just live in this urgency.

I always made stuff but never thought, I'm going to be an artist.