“I CAN’T IMAGINE EVER WANTING TO BE WHITE.” Daniel Joseph Martinez will forever be known for this sequence of eight words, strategically split up and printed onto a series of admission badges for the 1993 Whitney Biennial.

I consider Daniel a key mentor, who, in all his calmness, unleashed a sense of political urgency and agency that enabled me to consider what it means to have a practice invested in change. Choosing a life-path of art was one of the first transformations he effected in me.