Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s art is a quiet revelation that beckons you to savor its intricate details and compelling narratives.
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In an age of eye-catching Instagram-ready artwork, her creations require a different kind of engagement – one that rewards patience and thoughtful observation.
Akunyili Crosby’s pieces, predominantly on paper with a matte finish, employ Robert Rauschenberg’s transfer technique. Through this method, she blends images from magazines and books into her art, crafting meticulous visual tapestries that intertwine past and present.
Her artwork exudes a deep sense of serenity, as though it exists outside the confines of time’s ceaseless flow. “Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens,” for instance, portrays the artist and her child in a garden. They appear both vividly real and dreamlike, surrounded by historical snapshots and abstract patterns that evoke the artist’s native Nigeria.
Within this art, there is an undercurrent of profound trauma, echoing the plight of the Bring Back Our Children movement in response to Boko Haram’s actions. It is juxtaposed with joyful family moments and cultural significance, all seamlessly woven together.
Akunyili Crosby suggests that her art occupies a unique space, bridging the gap between her current life and her homeland, between the now and the then. Her mother’s photograph on the house’s refrigerator encapsulates the passage of generations.
In “Blend in – Stand out,” a woman embraces a man, symbolizing the artist’s biracial identity. The presence of an Igbo pot and the woman’s dress adorned with images of Black figures with raised fists underline the influence of her Nigerian upbringing.
While moments of brutality are also depicted, such as in “A Sunny Day on Bar Beach,” where a public beach in Lagos was once a site of executions by the military government, Akunyili Crosby’s art is primarily a journey of self-discovery. In the series “The Beautyful Ones,” a young Black girl in a white communion dress stands amid a vibrant tapestry of transferred images, marking the beginning of her own remarkable voyage. There is no pain or suffering here, just a poignant moment on Akunyili Crosby’s road to self-realization.
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