A large-scale latex-on-fabric-and-canvas work, "A beckoning: We are not who we think we are" presents Rodney McMillian's signature approach to materiality as a vehicle for social and psychological inquiry. Completed in 2015, the piece layers latex directly onto fabric and canvas, exploiting the tension between the skin-like quality of the medium and the raw, yielding support beneath it. The result is a surface that reads as simultaneously bodily and architectural, intimate and monumental, inviting prolonged looking at a work that refuses easy resolution. McMillian, whose practice spans painting, performance, video, and installation, consistently uses humble or unconventional materials to interrogate questions of race, labor, and embodiment in American life. Here, the choice of latex carries unmistakable resonance, evoking protective membranes, industrial surfaces, and the loaded history of rubber as a commodity tied to colonial extraction. The title compounds this complexity, framing the work as both an address and a destabilization of identity, a gesture outward toward the viewer while simultaneously pulling the ground from beneath fixed selfhood. For collectors, this signed work represents a significant moment within McMillian's ongoing investigation of what surfaces can bear witness to and what they can conceal. Its current presentation at MASS MoCA situates it within a serious institutional context that underscores its critical ambition. Works of this scale and conceptual depth from McMillian's mature practice appear rarely on the market, making this an acquisition of both cultural and long-term investment consequence.