Jasmine Guinness

As a teenager, I was teased at school about my height and long legs, but now they are my best assets. Kids can be mean. When I was at school, I considered myself ugly, but that was when I was silly enough to believe that what other people thought mattered. Now I think I am pretty. I'm not beautiful. There is a difference.

It's high time for the art world to admit that the avant-garde is dead. It was killed by my hero, Andy Warhol, who incorporated into his art all the gaudy commercial imagery of capitalism (like Campbell's soup cans) that most artists had stubbornly scorned.

I'm one of those people who is colour blind to a certain degree. And that doesn't mean I'm not acutely aware of race in our country and abroad and in the world. I know what's going on, and I'm very aware of it.