"My grandfather, the first Black basketball player at the University of Pittsburgh, is one of thirty-three 1,000-point scorers in the school’s history and graduated with an engineering degree."
"The lighting by the water is unrivaled, making it ideal for portraiture. My series of photos became about the joy and happiness that the water brings people."
"I’ve replayed in my mind Suzanne’s death. I wasn’t there, and the details as they’ve been told to me get conflated, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing them over and over again."
"My mom doesn’t understand heartbreak because she’s never had her heart broken. She’s always been the one to break hearts, the one to close the door on people, the one to say goodbye."
"My uncle said he was fine with me writing a biography of him, but in an email, he wrote, “Any biography of me would be fiction. Even if I were to write it myself! I don't know me that well!'”
"There’s this photograph of my dad, from the late 1990s, in an old album somewhere on a bookshelf. He is standing on a rock, laughing. His hair is wavy, and he’s tan. The ocean is behind him. "
"Sampling, a key element in hip hop, is subversive. It disrupts the traditional roles of the author and the reader. Sampling is referential at is core, as producers read previously authored musical texts and author new music."
"By placing black male bodies into the classic framework of portraiture, Kehinde Wiley asserts that there is something inherently noteworthy about blackness."
"Created during a time of imminent loss, these silkscreen and aquatint prints explore how relationships—between loved ones and with oneself—both fall apart and are rebuilt when affected by devastating circumstances."