You have to recover the capacity to imagine yourself as an ideal and figure out how to project that into the world.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of envisioning your ideal self and actively working to present that identity to the world.
Kerry James Marshall's quote speaks to the transformative power of imagination and self-identity. It suggests that in order to achieve our fullest potential, we must first visualize who we aspire to be and take the necessary steps to embody that vision in our interactions with the world. This process of self-imagining is crucial in shaping not only our personal lives but also our contributions to society.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth, this quote can inspire individuals to visualize their goals.
In Western Catholicism, darkness was evil. In the colonial and imperial context, dark skin was always weak, powerless, subjugated. If you see these images all the time, they become commonplace, and they no longer become a spectacular or sensational thing.
My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.
If you think about the way we experience art, the paradigm is still Western European. If I go to the National Gallery, what am I going to see the most of? I'm not going to see a whole lot of black figures in pictures.
When you go to an art museum, the thing you're least likely to encounter is a picture of a black person. When it comes to ideas about art and about beauty, the black figure is absent.
The history of political movements in the African diaspora is that the solution to the problem is never in the hands of people who are advancing the movement. I try and operate on my own terms.
Too often, if you look back through the history of representation and you take the work of African-American artists, the work is on such a modest scale that it becomes sort of inconsequential.
When you enchant people, your goal is not to make money from them or to get them to do what you want, but to fill them with great delight.
A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions (...) if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life. #Page no.134
I think you can do anything in this life whether you're in a wheelchair or not. I go to festivals, nightclubs, I travel the world, I'm loving my work on Triple J.
Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful.
Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.
If there's anyone out there that looks a bit like me, or just feels a little bit out of place just trying to get into performing, you are beautiful; embrace it. You are intelligent; embrace it. You are powerful; embrace it.
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