Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent work by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, inaugurating the gallery’s new Los Angeles location. This will be Akunyili Crosby’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, which will travel to David Zwirner New York in September 2023.

Born in Nigeria, Akunyili Crosby moved to the United States as a teenager in 1999, and her work reflects her hybrid cultural background and experiences. In her methodically layered figurative compositions, Akunyili Crosby 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 of contemporary life that evocatively express the intricacies of African diasporic identity.

Akunyili Crosby currently lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist was awarded an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College in May 2019. She was the recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship in addition to a number of awards and grants, including the Prix Canson, 2016; Next Generation Prize, New Museum, New York, 2015; the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, 2015; and the James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2014. She was an artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, from 2011 to 2012. Akunyili Crosby’s work has been represented by David Zwirner since 2018.

Image: Installation view, Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2023

Location

616 North Western Avenue Los Angeles CA, 90004

Dates

May 23—July 29, 2023

Opening Reception

Tuesday, May 23, 6—8pm

Gallery Hours

Tues—Sat 10am–6pm

Artist

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Press Release

Coming Back to See Through, Again

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, 2021 (detail)

"I’m Nigerian, I’m American — you can be both. You don’t have to give up this history and culture and memories to fit in. I think places are richer for having difference. The story I’m mining is that story."

—Njideka Akunyili Crosby, The New York Times

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

"The Beautyful Ones" Series #10: A Sunny Day on Bar Beach, 2022

Acrylic, colored pencil, pastel, charcoal, and transfers on paper

78 1/2 x 53 3/4 inches (199.4 x 136.5 cm)

The exhibition in Los Angeles, where the artist and her family live, includes two new works from the artist’s series The Beautyful Ones, which Akunyili Crosby first began in 2012. Several of the earlier works from this series are currently included in The Hilton Als Series: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, an exhibition that debuted at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut—where the artist received her MFA—in September 2022, and is now on view through June 12, 2023, at The Huntington in San Marino, California.

Installation view, The Hilton Als Series: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2022–2023

Installation view, The Hilton Als Series: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, 2023

The series takes its title from a popular 1968 Ghanaian novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, by Ayi Kwei Armah. As the artist explains, “[the book] was written in my parent’s generation, and it was about the hope that generation had about how things would change and be better after various West African countries became independent, but sadly that didn’t happen. In Nigeria, we just ended up having military dictator after military dictator, and corruption and everything just went down the drain. But there is this renaissance happening so I’m … claiming it for my generation, like the beautyful ones have arrived!”

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

"The Beautyful Ones" Series #11, 2023

Acrylic, colored pencil, and transfers on paper

74 1/4 x 47 inches (188.6 x 119.4 cm)

“[The Beautyful Ones] signals Akunyili Crosby's contribution to a stream of literary and political thought that flows through post-colonial African history from the independence era of the mid-twentieth century to the present. At issue is the question of freedom and self-determination, and an ever-renewing realization that each generation invested with the aspirations of the people seems destined to dash them.”

—Siddhartha Mitter, writer and critic

Installation view, Njideka Akunyili Crosby: "The Beautyful Ones", National Portrait Gallery, London, 2018–2019

Bringing multiple places and temporalities into single compositions, Akunyili Crosby uses doorways, screens, posters, and windows as devices that open to other worlds, such as private interior spaces, lush external gardens, and bustling Nigerian markets. The present work shows a view of the corner of a room with an open closet, filled with clothes and personal items, and a wedding dress and other garments hanging from the door.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Ejuna na-aga, ọ kpụlụ nkọlikọ ya; New Haven (Enugu) in New Haven (CT), 2022

Acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal, and transfers on paper

95 5/8 x 111 inches (242.9 x 281.9 cm)

On the right side of the composition, a poster depicting a vibrant Nigerian market is visible. Through these visual devices—the poster and the closet—Akunyili Crosby opens the otherwise confined space to expansive views of her personal world.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Ejuna na-aga, ọ kpụlụ nkọlikọ ya; New Haven (Enugu) in New Haven (CT), 2022 (detail)

On the table near the wall are several still-life objects that relate to the artist’s home in Nigeria, including a blue jerry can filled with water, and a tea kettle from the region. Two personal items also appear here: a photograph of the artist from her first Catholic communion—which served as the basis for "The Beautyful Ones" Series #11 (2022)—and a copy of Eddie Iroh's Without a Silver Spoon, a classic young adult novel that would be immediately familiar to Nigerians.

Installation view, Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2023

“Doors, windows, screens and frames proliferate in [Akunyili Crosby's] settings—inviting our simultaneous arrival and departure—her work functions as an overarching portal through which mutable ideas about transcultural identity flow.”

—Steven Matijcio, curator

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, 2021

Acrylic, colored pencil, collage, and transfers on paper

95 7/8 x 108 inches (243.5 x 274.3 cm)

In Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, which shows the artist with her young child on the back porch of their home surrounded by plants and vines, a sliding door reveals a domestic interior space, hinting at the private world within. Inside, an image of Akunyili Crosby’s mother can be glimpsed, offering a powerful multigenerational representation of the tenderness, love, and beauty of motherhood.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, 2021 (detail)

The treatment of paint and the layering of the photographic transfers in this work create a tension between depth and surface that optically and narratively affect how the viewer visually navigates the composition. This work first appeared in Picturing Motherhood Now at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2021 and 2022, and was featured in the artist’s solo exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, in 2022.

Installation view, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 2022

“By filling these intimate, everyday moments with materials that reflect her home country—such as Nigerian fabrics, images from popular local media, and her own family’s photographs—Akunyili Crosby draws attention to the ways in which the personal is political. Existence as a secure family can be an act of resistance for immigrants—particularly black families—in the United States.”

—Naima J. Keith, vice president of education and public programs, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Installation view, Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2023

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Potential, Displaced, 2021

Acrylic, colored pencil, and transfers on paper

72 1/4 x 60 inches (183.5 x 152.4 cm)

Several works in the exhibition—which were also included in the artist’s exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art—prominently feature vegetation and plant life. More than decorative motifs, plants—and their origins and migrations—have deep cultural and historical associations that naturally appeal to the artist. One of these works, Potential, Displaced, served as the basis for a wallcovering commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, that is currently on view as part of the ongoing installation Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room.

Installation view, Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s Thriving and Potential, Displaced (Again and Again and...) (2021), on view in Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Ongoing

In a number of these works the flora also overlay screen walls of the type that adorn many residences built in the 1970s and early 1980s in Nigeria. Individually striking, the plants and screens also create unique visual and formal lattices for Akunyili Crosby’s complex organization of imagery and space. Alive with history and culture, these works are at once highly personal and open and welcoming.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Persistence of Vision: Screen Walls & Fruit Tree, 2022

Acrylic and transfers on paper

101 5/8 x 83 1/8 inches (258.1 x 211.1 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Dwellers: Native One, 2019

Acrylic, colored pencil, graphite, collage, and transfers on paper

62 1/8 x 59 3/4 inches (157.8 x 151.8 cm)
Framed: 69 x 66 3/4 inches (175.3 x 169.6 cm)

“Akunyili Crosby continues the long history in the arts of creating work based on what is known and seen; a preoccupation with the quotidian allows the artist to discover it as a resource for greater artistic challenges imbued with significant meaning. The history of Western art offers formal references for any artist interested in representation, and Akunyili Crosby has studied and embraced it, from Michelangelo's Pietà to Vuillard's patterned interiors.”

—Cheryl Brutvan, director of curatorial affairs, Norton Museum of Art

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Dwellers: Cosmopolitan Ones, 2022

Acrylic, colored pencil, and transfers on paper

62 7/8 x 59 3/4 inches (159.7 x 151.8 cm)

“That word, cosmopolitanism, is always in my head when I’m working, difference next to difference—I hate the idea of assimilation as a prerequisite for being American. No. You don’t have to give up your culture. You just carry the stories that you brought with you and exist next to other people, and it actually makes for a richer world.”

—Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Blend in - Stand out, 2019

Acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal, and transfers on paper

95 3/4 x 123 3/4 inches (243.2 x 314.3 cm)

Akunyili Crosby created the present work for a major 2019–2020 group exhibition at Haus der Kunst, Munich. Here, a seated male figure's face is blocked by a woman who leans over, embracing him. Her face is turned away and likewise obscured, highlighting the private, personal nature of the scene. The two appear in a dining room with an ornate pot filled with flowers on the table.

Installation view, Interiorities: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Leonor Antunes, Henrike Naumann, Adriana Varejão, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2019–2022. Photo by Connolly Weber Photography

“The artist’s own globally entangled biography, her lived reality oscillating between two continents and cultural circles offers a point of departure. The loving relationship—inevitably politically charged—between the artist, a black woman who grew up in a small city in Nigeria, and her husband, a white American, finds its way into her work.”

—Anna Schneider, assistant curator, Haus der Kunst

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Blend in- Stand out, 2019 (detail)

“Using acrylic paint, pastel, colored pencils, and photo transfers, Akunyili Crosby does not, in the end, achieve a single effect in a canvas. Indeed, her paintings present a world that is literally layered, and deeply committed to the depth to be found on the surfaces that make up intimate and private spaces, including the body.”

—Hilton Als, curator and author

Installation view, Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2023

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An installation view of the exhibition, Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again, at David Zwirner in Los Angeles, dated 2023.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

"The Beautyful Ones" Series #10: A Sunny Day on Bar Beach, 2022

Acrylic, colored pencil, pastel, charcoal, and transfers on paper

78 1/2 x 53 3/4 inches (199.4 x 136.5 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

"The Beautyful Ones" Series #11, 2023

Acrylic, colored pencil, and transfers on paper

74 1/4 x 47 inches (188.6 x 119.4 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Ejuna na-aga, ọ kpụlụ nkọlikọ ya; New Haven (Enugu) in New Haven (CT), 2022

Acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal, and transfers on paper

95 5/8 x 111 inches (242.9 x 281.9 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, 2021

Acrylic, colored pencil, collage, and transfers on paper

95 7/8 x 108 inches (243.5 x 274.3 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Potential, Displaced, 2021

Acrylic, colored pencil, and transfers on paper

72 1/4 x 60 inches (183.5 x 152.4 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Persistence of Vision: Screen Walls & Fruit Tree, 2022

Acrylic and transfers on paper

101 5/8 x 83 1/8 inches (258.1 x 211.1 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Dwellers: Native One, 2019

Acrylic, colored pencil, graphite, collage, and transfers on paper

62 1/8 x 59 3/4 inches (157.8 x 151.8 cm)
Framed: 69 x 66 3/4 inches (175.3 x 169.6 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Dwellers: Cosmopolitan Ones, 2022

Acrylic, colored pencil, and transfers on paper

62 7/8 x 59 3/4 inches (159.7 x 151.8 cm)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Blend in - Stand out, 2019

Acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal, and transfers on paper

95 3/4 x 123 3/4 inches (243.2 x 314.3 cm)

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