Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Nigeria, New York, b.1983
Portals
2016
Acrylic, transfers on paper, colored pencil, collage, and commemorative fabric on paper.
Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro, London.
Portals presents Njideka Crosby’s desire to connect her various cultural experiences. She employs mixed media, taking images from Nigerian pop culture and politics, which feature significant figures such as pop stars, models and celebrities, as well as lawyers in white wigs and military dictators (Victoria Miro 2016: Njideka Akunyili Crosby). These pieces are representative of her origin and formative years in Nigeria; such things as the choice of portraiture and the patterned interiors speak to her experience in the US and training in European/American art history. For Aken, this contrast creates “a new visual language that represents [her] experience” as a Nigerian woman living in the US. Likewise, displaying this artwork in the exhibition in New York (Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney Collection) and London (Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Portals) created a transnational exhibition reflecting the artist’s own effort to manifest the sentiment of existence and movement across national borders and seas. (Zelt 2018:122). Crosby’s intersectional representation of how her Nigerian and American experiences interact thus find its themes carried out both within and beyond the canvas of her artwork.
http://www.njidekaakunyilicrosby.com/work/portals#details
https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/185-njideka-akunyili-crosby/
Zelt, Natalie. 2018. Picturing an Impossible American: Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Photographic Transfers in Portals (2016). Open Cultural Studies. 2(1): 212-224. Retrieved 25 Apr. 2019, from https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2018-0020