Njideka Akunyili Crosby

In her methodically layered compositions, Njideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983) 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 that vivify the personal and social dimensions of contemporary life while evocatively expressing the intricacies of African diasporic identity.

Akunyili Crosby was born 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 also the recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and has received a number of awards and grants, including the Prix Canson (2016); Next Generation Prize, 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 from 2011 to 2012.

The artist’s work has been represented by David Zwirner since 2018. In 2023, the solo presentation Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again inaugurated the gallery’s new Los Angeles location. The exhibition traveled to David Zwirner, New York, later that year. In 2025, David Zwirner Books published a large-scale monograph on the artist.

In 2022, Akunyili Crosby’s work was presented in the third of a trilogy of solo exhibitions curated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and critic Hilton Als at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut. In 2023, the show traveled to The Huntington, San Marino, California. At the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, a solo presentation of the artist's work was on view in 2022. Other solo institutional exhibitions of the artist’s work include those presented at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2018–2019); National Portrait Gallery, London (2018–2019); Baltimore Museum of Art (2017–2018); Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida (2016); and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015). In 2019, the artist participated in the 58th Venice Biennale.

In 2026, Akunyili Crosby was commissioned to create the first official joint portrait of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. The work remains on view in the main lobby of the Obama Presidential Center, Chicago.

Work by the artist is held in significant museum collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The 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, United Kingdom; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town.