Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Art Brokerage: Njideka Akunyili Crosby Nigerian Artist: b. 1983. Njideka Akunyili Crosby (born 1983) is a Nigerian-born visual artist working inCalifornia. Akunyili Crosby's art "negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria, creating collage and photo transfer-based paintings that expose the challenges of occupying these two worlds". In 2017, Akunyili Crosby was awarded the prestigious Genius Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. After graduating from Yale in 2011, Akunyili Crosby was selected as artist-in-residence at the highly regarded Studio Museum in Harlem, known for promoting and supporting emerging African artists. During this residency she met her mentor, New-York based artist, Wangechi Mutu. She spent her year of residence experimenting with drawing, figure painting, studying contemporary art, postcolonial history and diasporic studies. In 2015, Jamillah James, a former Studio Museum in Harlem curator and at the time, assistant curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, organized Akunyili Crosby's first solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum. That same year, James organized another exhibition of Akunyili Crosby's work at Art and Practice in Los Angeles. In 2016, Akunyili Crosby was named Financial Times Woman of the Year." That same year, a solo exhibition of Akunyili Crosby's work was held at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida. In 2017, Akunyili Crosby won the MacArthur Fellowship Genius grant Listings wanted.