I certainly wasn't consciously hiding my identity in the earlier work, though a lot of people have brought up the fact that I drew myself without eyeballs.
I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn't know anything about it.
A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you. And then that's what you have to be. But what I'm looking for is the opportunity to explore what I can do, probing the limits, learning.
What draws me to family... if I were a psychiatrist, I'd say an enormous amount of unresolved personal material. If I were an anthropologist, I'd say families are at the root of social structures - they shape our identity, our belief systems - and so I find them fascinating. Also, I love the idea that families have narratives that are essentially the family story that is passed along generation to generation - and the rifts start when people question the story.
The question of boundaries is a major question of the Jewish people because the Jews are the great experts of crossing boundaries. They have a sense of identity inside themselves that doesn't permit them to cross boundaries with other people.
There is nothing in existence available without payment. If you want to know yourself, you will have to drop all false identities. They are your investments, they are your power, they are your prestige, they are your religion, they are your qualifications. It is difficult to drop them; it feels like death.
Part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores.
I do believe, separate and apart from any particular election or movement, that we are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them.
No matter what identity we cling to, it takes great courage to step out of the old masks we wear and the old scripts that we live by, and open ourselves to the mysterious inner core of our being.