2018
(New York, London & Hong Kong – November 9, 2018) David Zwirner is pleased to announce the representation of Njideka Akunyili Crosby in collaboration with Victoria Miro.
Akunyili Crosby’s experience of syncretic cultures in both Nigeria and the United States informs the subject matter of her artworks. She was born in Nigeria and, at sixteen, immigrated to the US, where she has lived since. Akunyili Crosby draws from literary sources and personal narratives and extrapolates from her training in Western representational painting to invent a visual language capable of representing contemporary transcultural experiences.
The artist’s work will be featured in forthcoming solo presentations at the National Portrait Gallery, London (Njideka Akunyili Crosby: “The Beautyful Ones”, November 17, 2018–February 3, 2019); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Counterparts, December 1, 2018–January 13, 2019, which traveled from the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it was on view October 2017 to March 2018); and Victoria Miro Venice (on view May 2019). Her work will also be the focus of a show at the Yale Center for British Art in 2020, the third in a series of three successive exhibitions curated by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als (Celia Paul in 2018; Lynette Yiadom-Boakye in 2019). Other ongoing projects include an outdoor mural for MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles (on view through December 31, 2018); the Hayward Gallery Billboard featuring her 2017 painting Dwell: Aso Ebi in London (on view through February 2019); and Remain, Thriving (2018), a Transport for London/Art on the Underground commission for Brixton Underground station (on view through March 2019).
Solo exhibitions of her work include Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Predecessors, held at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, which traveled to the Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, in 2017; Njideka Akunyili Crosby: I Refuse to be Invisible at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 2016; Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Before Now After (Mama, Mummy, Mamma), The Whitney Museum of American Art Billboard Project, New York, 2015; and Njideka Akunyili Crosby: The Beautyful Ones, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, which was staged concurrently with a solo presentation at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2015.
Recent group exhibitions include Sanguine/Bloedrood: Luc Tuymans on Baroque (curated by Luc Tuymans), which traveled from the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA) to the Fondazione Prada, Milan, where it is on view through February 25, 2019; Michael Jackson: On the Wall, National Portrait Gallery, London, held in 2018; and Prospect.4, New Orleans, in 2017.
Akunyili Crosby was born in Enugu, Nigeria, in 1983 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She is the recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and has received a number of awards and grants, including the Prix Canson, 2016; Next Generation honor, 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 in 2011–2012.
The artist’s work is held in significant museum collections, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 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 Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town.
For all press inquiries, contact
Julia Lukacher +1 212 727 2070 jlukacher@davidzwirner.com
Image: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Mama, Mummy and Mamma (Predecessors #2), 2014 (detail)