Ms. Akunyili Crosby was born in Enugu, Nigeria, in 1983, moved to Lagos for boarding school when she was about 10 and lived there until she was 16. She then moved to the US and after taking some courses at the Community College of Philadelphia completed a BA with honors in Biology and Art at Swarthmore College. She earned a post-baccalaureate certificate at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (PAFA) in 2006, and an MFA from Yale University in 2011. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the artist Justin Crosby, and their two children.
The following is a condensed and edited version from our New Social Environment daily lunchtime conversation #63 (June 11, 2020), and a follow-up conversation on June 26.
Jason Rosenfeld (Rail): Can you talk about your connection with art in Nigeria before you came to the United States?
Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Growing up I did a lot of drawing. I’d find a piece of charcoal from outside and I’d make copies of photographs I saw in magazines. My dad bought Time magazine and Newsweek religiously and I would do drawings from them. So that was the extent of what I did regarding art. We lived in Enugu, which is just about an hour from Nsukka, which has a very rich history of Nigerian art. It’s where the Nsukka School was based, El Anatsui lives there—and I’m ashamed to say my family had no connection to it, that I didn’t even know it existed until years after I left. My family was very disconnected from it because we’re a very science-heavy family.