Quotes About Representation

As a woman of color and curve model, I never imagined when I started modeling that I would be featured in the pages of 'Sports Illustrated.'

When I was growing up, 'Ebony Magazine' was a must read in our household. In those pages I found our news, our stories, and my pride.

You look at the sports pages and you'd often be forgiven for thinking women didn't do sport.

There are folks who now know black families - like the Johnsons on 'Black-ish' or the folks on 'Modern Family.' They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person.

To me, a drop of oil paint or a xerographic dot are the same thing - they're all just language.

With my face paint on, I don't look like a regular black dude.

I just think it's really great to see athletes painted in a picture that you don't usually get to see us in.

I don't look like the way we've painted directors in our movies and everything since forever. I don't look like an old white guy in a baseball cap. So, yes, there are always moments when people are surprised that I'm the director.

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 have always been a fan of Salvador Dali, but Amrita Sher-Gil, who was an Indian-Hungarian painter, is another favourite. She was painting Indian women, and, growing up here, I'd never seen anyone paint Indian women, so that was really incredible to see a painting of someone who looks like you. I think that has a lot of impact on you.

Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them.

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

I don't really look like people in films; I look like people in paintings.

My paintings are very much about the consumption and production of blackness. And how blackness is marketed to the world.

Pakistan hasn't been cast in the role of... interesting cultural place or, you know, land of great comedians.

It has been an honour to lead Pakistan at the highest level.

I want to be the first Pakistani, like some of our counterparts in India, to really go out and show that we Pakistanis can even be successful outside Pakistan.

No one's of Pakistani origin in any British show. That's why every actor of color is here working in the States. It's true.

Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.

My identity is that of a Pakistani player. And nothing is more important than that for me.

I have no illusions about our elected politicians. Pakistani democracy is anything but perfect.