A 2-for-1 Steal

Have you ever moved somewhere really far away, like hundreds of thousands of miles away, from where you used to stay? If you have, it must be pretty exciting, because now you will have an “inside look” on how another group of people act and operate, and you can contrast it with your “first” culture. You can try both cultures’ foods, traditions, lifestyles, the list goes on. Well, lucky for all of us, a lady, who goes by the name of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, is 2 different cultures sewed into one remarkable painter.

Crosby was born in her native country Nigeria in 1983. She’s lived in both its rural and urban areas and is also an American who’s lived in the US for more than 18 years. She’s also married to Justin Crosby, A Caucasian-American who came from Texas. Because of all these different places and experiences she’s lived in/through, she strives to use all that in her work to reveal the beauty and unity that’s possible with the collaboration of cultures.

The key to Crosby’s work is hybridity. The key is combining her 2 very unlike cultures into one entity. Her paintings always include Nigerian lifestyle magazines, news clippings, album covers, family photographs, etc. It’s purposely made to look like it’s fading away, because for Crosby, “It’s like a faint, faded memory of a place I used to know, a place I used to live in.”

Crosby has won, and is rightfully deserving of it, a plethora of awards and honors, which include the Smithsonian American Art’s Museum’s James Dicke Contemporary Art Prize and the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize. Her work is also in the permanent collections of the Hammer, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She’s also been named a MacArthur Fellow.

All this achieved just because of a change of homes. If Crosby’s able to do all this, who says you can’t do the same and more?