SUNDAY, MAY 8 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE E3ART- Akunyili Crosby was born
23 years later. She left the country
to study in the United States
when she was 17. She sees herself
as part of an “Afropolitan” genera-
tion (the term was coined in the
mid-2000s by Achille Mbembe
and Taiye Selasi): urban, mobile,
transnational and occupying
threshold states between tradi-
tion and change, appropriation
and authenticity.
At the same time, Akunyili
Crosby is acutely aware of the
generations before her. She has
seen how colonialism stimulated
in her parents’ generation, for
instance, a desire to emulate cer-
tain British cultural forms (even
as it remade them). And she hasnoticed how her own more cos-
mopolitan generation feels some-
what anxious in its relationship
to pre-colonial traditions.
The photographs the artist
transfers onto her backgrounds,
in the form of suggestively faded
collages (in this case across the
floor and up part of the wall),
speak to all this. They touch on
Nigerian fashion and pop culture.
They sometimes evoke or appro-
priate the portrait photography
of Seydou Keïta and the party
photographs of Malick Sidibé,
both of whom captured the ex-
citement of the post-ind-
ependence generation in Mali,
when modern European mores
mingled with African traditions
in that country’s big cities. And
they suggest the African diaspo-
ra, including its mark on Black
American pop music, which inturn has influenced African
m usic.
Akunyili Crosby uses complex
systems of perspective to accen-
tuate the feeling of multiplicity in
her imagined scenarios. The
space in the right panel of “Por-
tals,” for instance, ripples and
buckles as you walk by it.
Political antagonisms, too, can
ripple and recede, softened by
history. Injustices persist. Some-
times they deepen. But not every
generation wants to fight the
e xact same battles its parents
fought. Optimism and love can
get the better of people’s impulse
to fight. Economics comes into it,
too. People move to cities, find
jobs, seek better opportunities.
They marry foreigners, have chil-
dren, consider returning and so
on.
Akunyili Crosby has done allthis in her own life. Her paintings
do honor to the complexity of
cultural exchange. She is anti-
essentialist. She builds her “char-
acters” with props that include
hairstyles and fashions evoking
different places, times and influ-
ences. These are all packed with
historical ironies sufficiently
acute to become, in the right
light, liberating.
Her take on complexity gives
rise not to chaotic, jumbled im-
agery but to ordered, enigmatic,
even calming works. “Portals” has
a serenity born of experience. It
calls to mind domestic rituals,
such as putting young children to
bed in an urban apartment, mak-
ing coffee as the morning light
pours into the kitchen of your
parents’ home, or looking out the
window of an Airbnb in a foreign
city at dusk.GREAT WORKS, IN FOCUSBY SEBASTIAN SMEEI
have loved the work of
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
since encountering her daz-
zling take on Manet’s “The
Dead Toreador” at the Yale
University Art Gallery in 2014.
Since then, the 39-year-old artist,
who was born and raised in Ni-
geria and now lives in Los Ange-
les, has quietly established her-
self as one of the most closely
watched artists alive.
Her works often portray her-
self, her husband, her friends.
Their mood is sweetly muffled
and intimate. They show real
people in domestic interiors,
sometimes partying, more often
sitting, lying, embracing.
For all their quietude, they are
also expansive in their cultural
and historical reach. Most have
the scale and rich coloring of
paintings but are actually works
on paper. “Portals,” a diptych at
the Whitney Museum of Ameri-
can Art in New York, was made
with acrylic, solvent transfer, col-
lage of fabric and paper, and
colored pencil.
The left panel shows a woman
(the artist) sitting at a bare table.
She appears pensive. Her body is
in one of those abstracted, in-be-
tween physical states so often
revealed by photographs. Pic-
tures are stacked on the floor in
the right panel, suggesting a tem-
porary residence. But we also see
a cropped wedding portrait and a
television set.
A wide horizontal window re-
veals palm fronds against a blue-
black night. Are we in the tropics?
The walls show patterned fabrics
emblazoned with commemora-
tive portraits, a combination
commonly favored by Nigerians.
The two panels together meas-
ure about 17 feet across and 7 feet
high. Their sturdy composition is
striking even at a distance. But
they draw you in close — thanks
largely to the artist’s novel use of
photo transfers.
Nigeria was a British colony
that gained independence inBehind this picture’s intimacy, a complex portrait of the artistWHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ARTNjideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983)Portals, 2016At the Whitney Museum of American Art in New YorkA series featuring art critic Sebastian Smee’s favorite works in
permanent collections across the United States