If you're a Black artist, you could paint a wall of smiley faces, and someone will still ask you, 'Why are you so angry?'

Silhouettes are reductions, and racial stereotypes are also reductions of actual human beings.

I often compare my method of working to that of a well-meaning freed woman in a Northern state who is attempting to delineate the horrors of Southern slavery but with next to no resources, other than some paper and a pen knife and some people she'd like to kill

A lot of my work has been about the unexpected—that kind of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time. That kind of dilemma—that push and pull—is the underlying turbulence that I bring to each of the pieces that I make.

The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that's also what the stereotype does.