My great grandmother was Chinese .

If I did not love the things that I do, how could I spend my life doing this? You have to invest what you spend your life doing with pleasure.

When I go to China I see many artists whose work reflects on aspects of contemporary popular culture but obviously the history of Western art is not part of their own tradition.

[I] don't want people to see it [paintings] as a specific intention on my part. If somebody has that interest in these objects, of course they can see that, but from my own point of view, I'd rather stay as neutral as possible.

I wanted to make new works of very contemporary objects, which I thought was interesting because many of them are manufactured in China, but these objects are universal, they go across all languages, all cultures.

When I was a very young student I loved and admired the work of Sam Beckett, who is famously pessimistic, and whose writing is an extraordinary examination of emptiness. I wanted to be like Beckett. I don't have the same attitude toward the world, I'm naturally optimistic, and so of course I could never be like Beckett. You can't force yourself to become like someone you admire.

I was poorer than anyone I'd ever met. But it was a great time to be a young artist - I remember it as a period of exceptional creative freedom and adventure, when one was regularly presented with works of art unlike anything one had ever seen before.