It's been interesting to look back on those works [I've done previously] and see all the things that Beyoncé has done and become for us in the meantime, because back then, folks were like, "Why Beyoncé? I don't get why she is kind of the symbol for black womanhood."

The book [There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?] is quite complex, and I was worried that it would be marketed as one-sided or flat, and I knew that Mickalene's [Tomas] work would be able to encompass all the many states of being that are in the book.

Аrt movements are always linked to some kind of turmoil.

I've been thinking a lot about folks denying what has happened in history, or just not acknowledging it.

Sometimes it's just rejecting stereotypes, sometimes it's creating work. Sometimes it's just blocking out the noise.

And I would stop and take you in, all of you, and when our eyes lock we'd just stare into each other's souls and all of the lost time would come out in the shape of a big smile, a few tears and a tight hug that feels like...I don't know, it would feel like home.

I try to convey what it feels like and sounds like and smells like and looks like inside of my particular skin, to move through the world as a black American woman in her mid-twenties.