Njideka Akunyili Crosby Artist Bio:
In her methodically layered compositions, Njideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983) combines painted depictions of people, places, and subjects from her life with photographic transfers derived from her personal image archive as well as Nigerian magazines and other mass media sources. The resulting works are visual tapestries that vivify the personal and social dimensions of contemporary life while evocatively expressing the intricacies of African diasporic identity.
Akunyili Crosby was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist was awarded an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College in May 2019. She is also the recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and has received a number of awards and grants, including the Prix Canson (2016); Next Generation Prize, New Museum (2015); Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2015); and the James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize, The Smithsonian American Art Museum (2014), among others. She was an Artist in Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 2011 to 2012.
The artist’s work has been represented by David Zwirner since 2018. In 2023, the solo presentation Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again inaugurated the gallery’s new Los Angeles location. The exhibition traveled to David Zwirner, New York, later that year. David Zwirner Books will publish a large-scale monograph on the artist, which is scheduled to be released in 2024. Source (HERE)
Work by the artist is held in significant museum collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; National Museum of African Arts, Washington, DC; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Tate, UK; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town.
Artist Talks:
Whitney Museum (1:16:06 minutes) in-person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPU8W2xBBf4
Yale Center for British Art (58:38):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QACRhas8AM
Pérez Art Museum MiamiScholl Lecture Series: Njideka Akunyili Crosby in Conversation with Franklin Sirmans (1:25:56):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgKR6Tz1WEE
Njideka Akunyili Crosby: In Conversation | Tate Talks (1:27:30) in-person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnAvC5utKaM
SCA presents Njideka Akunyili Crosby (1:20:51):
