I am not an outsider artist, Kevin Sampson said.

He was speaking on a panel at the American Folk Art Museum in New York last week about sculptor Ronald Lockett alongside artist Michael Berube and Cara Zimmerman, a specialist in folk and outsider art at Christies. No one had explicitly labelled Sampson as such, but because he was invited to participate on the panel, it was surely implied.

I have been represented by Cavin Morris Gallery for years, Sampson continued. My work showed in the Venice Biennale. Its hard enough to be an African-American artist. Now we have to be outsiders?

The conversation had shifted from discussing Locketts work to discussing the politics of how such work is categorized. Lockett was a black, self-taught artist living and working in Bessemer, Alabama. His work, made from tin, wire and found metals, explored resilience of the human spirit in times of political oppression and physical constraint. He died at just 33 years old from AIDS-related pneumonia.