This extract is taken from a transcript of an interview between Sonia Boyce and Emma Dexter

ED: So, Sonia can you tell us a bit about the most obvious thing in this piece From Tarzan to Rambo - the fact that there is a woman's face repeated on it twelve times and it's a portrait of you - it's your image. Can you tell us why you put yourself in the picture in that way?

I suppose what I was thinking about at the time, was the way in which, as a child watching these films, these images became almost like a mirror in which I would see myself mimicking them - as if they were some kind of true representation of what black people were supposed to be like. And when I was making this piece, I was thinking about the irony of these representations - as being not just a model for white people to think about black people but for black people to think about themselves.

And so, the sequence of images has me looking in certain ways - in particular - there's one image where my eyes are extremely wide open, recalling a particular actor, whose name I don't remember, who was known, in the 1940's, for his comic expressions of wide-eyed Negro. And then there are other symbolic gestures - of appearing to be in some form of trance - you know my head going back and my eyes closed. And in trying to think about each one of those looks as a kind of symbolic gesture, I was looking at a number of other artists who used the portrait in that way, in particular, some of the work of Susan Hiller, where she was using the photo mat/photo booth as a vehicle for creating her own image.

I was also looking at the work of Rasheed Araeen, who made a series called How to Paint A Self Portrait that seemed very in tune with what I was attempting to do - the idea of a self-portrait that isn't a portrait at the same time, but is a kind of an ironic portrait. And the Surrealists had always been crucial in my making images - I'm looking back and thinking of a group-photograph of all the male Surrealists where their eyes are closed. I think this composite image was used for the cover of the Surrealist magazine, where it looks as if they're in a kind of semi-conscious state. So, I was using these three examples as a kind of model, in some way, for talking about consciousness and unconsciousness and about this sort of trance-like state - which was a favourite image of Hollywood at that time - the image of the black person as mystical in some way or as not fully conscious - under the spell of something - voodoo or something other-worldly.