Renee Cox is one of nine black artists and cultural leaders the NY Times Style Magazine recently asked for their take on cultivating black audiences and dismantling historically white institutions.
Cox says she draws inspiration from never having been raised to feel like a victim or that she was lesser than anyone else. “They don’t fall into the stereotypes of black people that white people have created,” she said of her work, some of which has been exhibited in Jamaica.
“If you’re presenting black people as victims, that goes a longer way to the bank, but that doesn’t change the status quo of the power structure of racism (because racism is about power and economics). I have been more interested in upsetting that paradigm, in at least having the fantasy of having the power, if not the reality.”