Rashid Johnson

“My composition often goes toward the black middle class or the black super-wealthy or strong historical black figures.”

“I've always had an interest in complicating the way that we perceive the black character, whether it's the black academic or scholar or activist or black intellectual.”

“Growing up in Chicago, there was a very particular type of home that would display the black Jesus figure. It wasn't a radical home. You wouldn't find these in a Black Panther house. There's still a strong allegiance to Christianity.”

“When I was younger, I remember there was a really famous book, and it was called 'The People Could Fly.' And so this idea of, kind of like, black characters kind of jumping into space and kind of the challenge that they presented to gravity I thought was really interesting.”

“I was born in Evanston, about three blocks away from the Chicago border. My mother, at the time, was finishing her Ph.D. in African History at Northwestern University. Soon after my birth, my parents split, and my father moved to Wicker Park, which is on the north side of the city.”

“My father ran a CB radio business. I grew up in a cluttered space that was filled with radios and antennas. It felt alien.”

“I wanted my art to deal with very formal concerns and to deal with very material concerns, and to deal with antecedents and art history, which for me go very far beyond just the influence of African-American artists.”

“I've always been interested in this idea of a privileged life, probably because it's something I hadn't seen much of.”

“When I was young, I remember feeling a real thirst for opportunities around the arts, for learning about how artists function and how institutions work.”

“I've been interested in LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka's work for quite a while. My first introduction to LeRoi Jones was when my mother used to read me the 'Dead Lecturer' poems when I was a kid.”

“For me, all the materials and objects I employ come from a specific space that's very personal.”

“'The New Black Yoga' originally was born from a film that I had made prior called 'Black Yoga.' And I was living in Berlin at the time, dealing with a lot of anxiety and stress around the project that I was working on, which is not an abnormal thing for me.”

“The thing that turned out to be interesting about CB radios was the ability to call out in the world with anonymity. You choose your handle. Race and class become non-signifiers.”

“You can really learn a lot from young people and the way they view the world.”

“I say that I suffer from what Rosalind Krauss was calling the post-medium condition, where an artist essentially employs several mediums in order to bring to life whatever specific ideas that they have. For me it's always been that way.”