Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Drawing on a multitude of references, Njideka Akunyili Crosby creates densely layered figurative compositions that, precise in style, conjure the complexity of contemporary experience. Born in Nigeria, Akunyili Crosby moved to the United States as a teenager, and her work reflects her hybrid cultural background and experiences.

Many of Akunyili Crosby's images feature images of family and friends in scenarios derived from familiar domestic experiences: eating, drinking, watching TV. Rarely do they meet the viewer's gaze but seem bound up in moments of intimacy or reflection that are left open to interpretation. Ambiguities of narrative and gesture are underscored by a second wave of imagery, only truly discernible close-up. Vibrantly patterned photo-collage areas are created from images derived from Nigerian magazines and other mass media sources, along with the artist's personal image archive. These elements present a compelling visual metaphor for the layers of memory and cultural history that inform and heighten the experience of the present.

About the artist

Njideka Akunyili Crosby was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1983 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

She is the recipient of a 2021 United States Artists Fellowship and a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and was awarded Financial Times' Women of the Year, 2016, alongside the Future Generation Art Prize 2017 Shortlist. She is the recipient of the 2020 Carnegie Corporation “Great Immigrant, Great American” Award; the 2019 African Art Award; the 2016 Prix Canson Prize; the 2015 Foreign Policy's Leading 100 Global Thinkers of 2015 Prize; the 2015 Next Generation Prize, New Museum of Contemporary Art; the 2015 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and the 2014 Smithsonian American Art Museum's James Dicke Contemporary Art Prize.

Recent selected solo exhibitions include The Hilton Als Series: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, The Huntington, California; The Hilton Als Series: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (2022–23); Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, USA (2022); "The Beautyful Ones", Victoria Miro Venice, Italy (2019); "The Beautyful Ones", National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (2018–19); Front Room: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, The Baltimore Museum of Art (2018); Prospect.4, curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, New Orleans, Louisiana (2018); Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Predecessors, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, which toured to Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (2017); Portals, Victoria Miro, London (2016), I Refuse to be Invisible, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach (2016) and The Beautyful Ones, Art + Practice, Los Angeles (2015), staged concurrently with a solo presentation at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015).

Recent group exhibitions include Soulscapes, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (2024); Capturing the Moment, Tate Modern, London (2023); Brave New World, Museum de Fundatie Zwolle, the Netherlands (2021–22); Women Painting Women, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, USA (2022); Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain, London, UK (2021–22); Toward Common Cause: Art, Social change, and The MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Illinois, USA (2021); Pushing the Margins: A Survey of LA Artists, Galleri Opdahl, Stavanger, Norway (2021); Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale, PAFA, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (2021); Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA (2021); Art Finds a Way, The Norton Museum, West Palm Beach, Florida, USA (2021); The Power of My Hands, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France (2021); This is Not Africa – Unlearn What You Have Learned, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark (2021); the 7th Biennial of Painting: Inner Spaces, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium (2020); Interiorities at Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020); I am... Contemporary Women Artists of Africa, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA; Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting Past and Present, Moody Centre for the Arts, Houston, Texas, USA (2020); The Power Of My Hands, Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris, France (2020); May You Live In Interesting Times, La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Ralph Rugoff (2019); Rock My Soul (Curated by Isaac Julien), Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK (2019); There I Belong. Hammershøi by Elmgreen & Dragset, SMK, Copenhagen, (2019).

Additionally, Akunyili Crosby has exhibited at institutional venues including; MCA Chicago, Chicago, USA (2019); National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (2018 & 2020); The Metropolitan Museum, NY, USA (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016 & 2019); the New Museum, New York (2015); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2014); Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (2014); Landcommandery of Alden-Biesen, Bilzen, Belgium (2014); BRIC, New York (2013); Bronx Museum, New York (2013); and the Museum of New Art Detroit (2012).

Her work is in the collections of major museums including Yale University Art Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Tate, The Norton Museum of Art, Zeitz MOCAA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOMA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Public projects include an outdoor mural for MOCA Los Angeles Grand Avenue [2018]; and Remain, Thriving, 2018 the first commission in a new programme at Brixton station, London.