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Njideka Akunyili Crosby (born 1983 ) is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles, California. Akunyili Crosby's art "negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria, creating collage and photo transfer-based paintings that expose the challenges of occupying these two worlds". In 2017, Akunyili Crosby was awarded the prestigious Genius Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Early life and education

Njideka Akunyili was born in 1983 and raised in Enugu, Nigeria. She is of Igbo descent. One of six siblings, Akunyili Crosby's father was a surgeon and her mother was a professor of pharmacology at the University of Nigeria. She moved to Lagos when she was ten years old to attend the secondary school Queen's College (QC) Yaba, Lagos. Her mother won the U.S. green card lottery for the family enabling Akunyili Crosby and her siblings to study abroad.

Two years later, at the age of 16, she left home with her sister, Ijeoma, and moved to the United States . She spent a year studying for her SAT's and taking American history classes before returning to Nigeria to serve a year of National Service. After she completed her service, she returned to the United States to study in Philadelphia. She graduated Swarthmore College in 2004, where she studied art and biology as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. She was at first getting pre-medical requirements to pursue a career in medicine before deciding to pursue art After graduating in 2004, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. This is where she earned a post-baccalaureate certificate in 2006. She later attended the Yale University School of Art, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Career

After graduating from Yale in 2011, Akunyili Crosby was selected as artist-in-residence at the highly regarded Studio Museum in Harlem, known for promoting and supporting emerging African artists. She spent her year of residence experimenting with drawing, figure painting, studying contemporary art, postcolonial history and diasporic studies.

In 2015, Jamillah James, a former Studio Museum in Harlem curator and at the time, assistant curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, organized Akunyili Crosby's first solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum. That same year, James organized another exhibition of Akunyili Crosby's work at Art and Practice in Los Angeles.

In 2016, Akunyili Crosby was named Financial Times Woman of the Year."

In 2016, a solo exhibition of Akunyili Crosby's work was held at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida. Highly respected art gallery Victoria Miro also started representing Akunyili Crosby that year.

In 2017 Akunyili Crosby won the MacArthur Fellowship Genius grant.

In 2018 Akunyili Crosby designed the mural that wrapped the Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand Avenue, Los Angeles. The mural features her characteristic style of combining painting with collage, printmaking, and drawing to create intricate, layered scenes. She was the second artist to create a mural for the site under a new initiative by the museum.

Art Market

Akunyili Crosby was one of the artists featured in Nathaniel Kahn’s 2018 documentary The Price of Everything where she discusses her career and attitude to the art market. It culminates with her painting Drown being sold at Sotheby’s contemporary art auction in November 2016 for $900,000.

In March 2012, Akunyili Crosby sold her piece titled The Beautyful Ones for $3,075,774 at Christie's London.

Influences

While attending Queens College, Akunyili Crosby was exposed to even more Nigerian, British, and American popular culture which contributed to the similarities between her work and the work of pop-culture artists . Akunyili Crosby cites classic and contemporary painters Édouard Vuillard and Chris Ofili as influences. She also draws on her experience as a Nigerian woman living in America in her work. She is influenced by writer Chinua Achebe whose focus on changing the English language to fit his culture is interpreted through Akunyili Crosby's artwork. Other influences, such as J.D Okhai Ojeikere and Malick Sidibé, are fine art photographers.

Process

She uses photos she has taken herself in Nigeria along with family photos and pages from popular Nigerian magazines. The photos "are layered in her works by collage and acetone-transfer prints, creating a fabric of images throughout her paintings". Her primary mediums include collage, photo transfer, acrylic paint, charcoal, and colored pencil. Along with a strong Nigerian influence, her style is also derived from pop culture, personal experience, and western academia. However, her work cannot be categorized as either American nor Nigeria, but rather the work is an autobiography based on her "character that doesn't fit into a box."

Selected exhibitions[edit]

• 2013: Bronx Calling: The Second Bronx Biennial" at the Bronx Museum
• 2014: Sound Vision, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, NC
• 2014: Draped Down, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City
• 2015: Hammer Projects: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California
• 2015: Portraits and Other Likenesses from SFMOMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• 2016: Before Now After(Mama, Mummy, Mamma), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
• 2017: Njideka Akunyili Crosby/Predecessors, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York
• 2017: Front Room: Njideka Akunyili Crosby/Counterparts, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Md
• 2017: Side by Side Dual Portraits of Artists, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Collections[edit]

• The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
  • "Reality of My Surroundings: The Contemporary Collection" October 1, 2016 – July 10, 2016
    • Presented ""The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" Might Not Hold True For Much Longer, 2013"
• Yale University Art Gallery
  • "The Rest of Her Remains, 2010"
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
  • "Janded, 2012"
  • "Wedding Portrait, 2012"
• The Whitney Museum of American Art
  • "Portals, 2016"
• Perez Art Museum Miami The Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • "Within Genres Collection" August 25, 2017 – August 19, 2018
    • Presented "See Through, 2016"
• The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
  • "I Always Face You, Even When it Seems Otherwise, 2012"
• The Studio Museum in Harlem
  • "Nwantinti, 2012"
• The Tate Modern The New Church Museum, Cape Town
  • "Our Lady" November 11, 2016-June, 2017
    • Presented "Mama, Mummy, and Mamma, 2014"
• Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
  • "Sunday Morning, 2014"
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  • "Bush Girl, 2015"
  • "I Still Face You, 2015"
  • "I See You In My Eyes, 2015"
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery The Norton Museum of Art
  • "The Beautyful Ones Series #5, 2016"
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
  • MOCA Mural: Njideka Akunyili Crosby
  • "Give and Take: Highlighting Recent Acquisitions"
    • Presented "Garden, Thriving, 2016"
• The Smithsonian National Museum of African Arts
  • "Wedding Souvenirs, 2016"

Awards and recognition[edit]

• 2014, The Smithsonian American Art Museum's James Dickey Contemporary Art Prize
• 2015 Next Generation prize at the New Museum of Contemporary Art
• 2015 The Studio Museum in Harlem's Wein Artist Prize
• 2015 Foreign Policy's Leading 100 Global Thinkers of 2015
• 2015 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize at the Studio Museum in Harlem
• 2016 Prix Canson
• 2016 Financial Times Women of the Year award
• 2016 Shortlisted for the 2017 Future Generation Art Prize
• 2016 Distinguished Alumni Award, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
• 2017 MacArthur Fellows Program