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I had never had a deep sense of belonging anywhere. I always felt I was an outsider.

Living in different cultures helped me work out who I was going to be, separate from where I came from.

My family comes from New Zealand, but I'm a London girl. I was born and raised in London, but I've got the blood of a New Zealander, so I always kind of felt like I didn't belong - in a good way.

There was a time when I was knocking on doors and concerned with being recognized in dominant culture. I've found a space where the terrain is different, where I'm embraced by people like me, and where I'm building new ways of doing things, as opposed to trying to insert myself in a place that might not be welcoming.

Me being a black girl in London, whose mom is first-generation African and whose dad is West Indian, gives me a different view. I'm coming at soul from my own place.

There is an element in some of my work that has to do with being an outsider, feeling like not part of the dominant culture.

I not only lived physically away from my native land, but the values and critical judgments of those closest to me became stranger and stranger.

I always felt I was living in two worlds. One was the Mexican world, because nearly everybody I knew, relatives and cousins and kids in the neighbourhood, were Mexican. Then school was a different world. It was ethnically mixed.

I come from the deep countryside. My family was in farming. I was not really exposed to business. Coming from that environment, I just wanted in my life to go overseas - that was a childhood dream because I wanted diversity, contacts, cultural meetings with others.

My return to London introduced me to a wider range of society.