The freeways create economic and racial borders in Los Angeles. South of Interstate 10 is one group of people, west of the 10 another, and south of the 405 North yet another.
I don't believe in blanket statements on race.
At the end of the day, I'm an artist. I may make work and decide to do something political, but it will come out of an artist's position. It won't come out of society telling me I have to. If I do, it's because I choose, as an artist, to do it.
The police pull up in back of my car and run my plates - they don't see you as you are; they see you through a racialized negative gaze. I think the best thing is not to internalize it too much, or it'll make you crazy because you know it's going to happen again.
Life, work - it's all very organic and fluid, a laboratory. I always tell people: whatever your thing is, you just have to be in it. Jump in; you'll figure it out.
About the time I was 7, I got really into black-exploitation films, so I made my own Wonder Woman, but I made her black.
I can go to my own opening, and the security guard will tell me that I have to go to the security entrance.
Generally, when I tell people I'm a painter, they ask me if I have a card: 'Yes, we'd like this room in this color.' I still might get cards that say 'Mark Bradford. Painter.'
I figure if you have one person that loves you, that's enough, growing up. You just need one person in your corner.
I never expected to run into a room and suddenly I belonged. I figured people who live on the fringes of society, they're more free. They can choose to visit anywhere; they don't belong to anywhere. It's like being without a nation, in a way.
In North America, what happens often is that they put race before nationhood. Everyone here is Hispanic-American, Chinese-American, African-American. But really, we're just North Americans of all these different descents. The only time I notice North Americans becoming national is when a war happens or a crisis happens.
When you're as tall as I am, you have no public privacy. People are constantly coming up and talking to you. Constantly. You have one of two ways to go: you engage with people, or you become really bitter. I choose to engage.
I am fully present wherever I am. Why bother being in a community or neighborhood and not being fully present? I think that's colonization. I'm not interested in that.
You either have to find a way to be really creative materially, or you better have a trust fund. And, last I checked, I didn't have a trust fund.
I have always been interested in people who live outside of the fabric of the norm.
The funny thing about being creative is that, especially high school people, I kept noticing I'd always go to these certain materials. I'd always be picking up trash and picking up paper and using it.
I have always been very intrigued by the outside of buildings. I can just walk down the street and be content with watching facades. I don't have to go inside.
