Villalongo's work is concerned with the exploration of Black presence in a historical context, reexamining the traditional canon of Western European art to locate a space for the celebration and expansion of the Black identity.

The artist describes the origin of his signature velvet and velour paper cut-outs by saying, “I liked painting with oils, but it didn’t connect to me as a material that made sense for any of my concerns...I stumbled on the velvet and velour just thinking about what things were around me that I looked at as a kid. My mom still had these velvet paintings from the late 70s and 80s, and that made me think, ‘This is a material that’s a lot closer to my visual Memory.’

My earlier work is highly narrative and episodic. Myth and satire became a way to speak about the poles between fiction and reality...The unimaginable and ugly reality of the world is sometimes best excised through making, because words lose all meaning in the face of it."