Rashid Johnson Quotations

I don't have any other skills. Some artists say that to mean that their embodied passion for art gave them no choice. I say it, very specifically, to say that I really didn't have any other options.

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.

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.

My father had a big brick cell phone, before anyone had a cell phone, because he was really just into that kind of thing - communication devices. I grew up between my father's laboratory and my mother's library.

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

My father owned a small company, called Gundel Electronics, where he did community band radio and some repair stuff.

I started rereading 'The Dutchman' - I kind of just pulled it off the shelf.

What I really hoped to do with my work was to at least be able to define my relationship to race.

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