‘Inside the First Official Portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama Together’ by Lauren Michele Jackson
2026
Tradition is not untouchable,” Njideka Akunyili Crosby tells me. “We can own it, we can shape it, we can move it the way we need.” Akunyili Crosby is talking about the matter of art—literally, the stuff of which her collaged, culturally scenic paintings are made. The 43-year-old Nigerian-born, Los Angeles–based artist’s practice is built on a discipline of old, with “very strong rules,” down to the way a canvas is pinned. Thus, each choice she makes in terms of materials—paper instead of the customary linen, acrylic paints and colored pencils alongside oils—poses a new question about what is substantive about art.
Read more at Harper’s BAZAAR.