Njideka Akunyili Crosby - by Njideka Akunyili Crosby & Jareh Das & Helen Molesworth & Jason Rosenfeld & Drew Thompson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The first monograph on the internationally celebrated Nigerian American painter who blends her personal history and African diasporic identity in layered compositions

"Critics have often (and rightly) marveled at the care and finesse with which Akunyili Crosby assembles vast multiplicities of time and place into singular sites of visual contestation." --Frieze

Njideka Akunyili Crosby's work unites multiple places and temporalities, reflecting both personal and universal dimensions of contemporary life and, in particular, the intricacies of the African diasporic identity. This first monograph on Akunyili Crosby brings together nearly fifty paintings, made from 2010 to 2023, that chart her methodical practice of layering painted representations of people, locales, and aspects of her own experiences with transferred images sourced from her personal collection, Nigerian publications, and other outlets. Akunyili Crosby reveals and revisits distinct realms, from lush gardens to domestic, interior worlds related to motherhood, family, marriage, the body, and personal identity.

New texts from Jareh Das, Helen Molesworth, Jason Rosenfeld, and Drew Thompson focus on a range of themes in Akunyili Crosby's work, including her visual language and material practice, her mixing of Western and Nigerian imagery and forms, and her use of photography in portraiture and figuration.

Review Quotes

"Akunyili Crosby implies that her paintings -- and perhaps art more broadly -- exist in some third space between here and her homeland, between the present and the past"-- "New York magazine"

"Her artwork exudes a deep sense of serenity, as though it exists outside the confines of time's ceaseless flow"-- "The Guardian"

"I was in awe of her virtuosic ability to relate the fluctuating global dynamics that shape her life through the subtlest painterly shifts, like how the high gloss of a lacquered shoe is slightly different from the sateen glow of a ficus leaf"-- "Artforum"

About the Author

Njideka Akunyili Crosby was born in 1983 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 the recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship, among a number of awards and grants. She was an Artist in Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 2011 to 2012.

Dr. Jareh Das is an independent curator, writer, and researcher who lives and works between West Africa and the United Kingdom.

Helen Molesworth is a Los Angeles-based writer, podcaster, and curator. Her major museum exhibitions include: Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957, This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980s, and Work Ethic. She has organized monographic exhibitions of Ruth Asawa, Moyra Davey, Noah Davis, Louise Lawler, Steve Locke, Kerry James Marshall, Catherine Opie, and Luc Tuymans. She is the author of numerous catalogue essays and her writing has appeared in Artforum, Art Journal, Documents, and October. The recipient of the 2011 Bard Center for Curatorial Studies Award for Curatorial Excellence, in 2021 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2022 she was awarded The Clark Art Writing Prize.

Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is a professor of art history at Marymount Manhattan College, New York, and a senior writer and editor-at-large at The Brooklyn Rail.

Drew Thompson is an art historian and curator of African and Black Diaspora visual and material culture.