Born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1983 Njideka Akunyili Crosby was raised by

her mother Dora Akunyili, a well-known pharmacist and Director of

Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and

Control (NAFDAC). At 16, she moved to the United States to pursue art

education. She attended the United World College of the Atlantic in

Wales before moving to Philadelphia, where she studied biology and

studio artat Swarthmore College. Inspired by her mother, she Initially

pursued a career in medicine. However, Crosby’s passion for art

emerged as a professional priority and prompted her enrollment in the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and, subsequently, the

Yale University School of Art, where she earned an MFA.

Crosby is well known for combining painting with photographic

transfers. Her technique involves rich layering of Nigerian and West

African symbols, figures, and archival materials, which, in turn, reveals

the many cross influences that shape and inform her creative practice.

Crosby has enjoyed remarkable success, with solo exhibitions at wellknown

institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and

the National Portrait Gallery in London. Crosby is also the recipient of

numerous prestigious awards, including a MacArthur Genius Award

recognizing her contributions to forming compound narratives in art

and contemporary art. She is also the recipient of the 2020 Carnegie

Corporation “Great Immigrant, Great American” Award; the 2019

African Art Award; the 2016 Prix Canson Prize; the 2015 Foreign

Policy’s Leading 100 Global Thinkers of 2015 Prize; the 2015 Next

Generation Prize, New Museum of Contemporary Art; the 2015 Joyce

Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and the 2014 Smithsonian American Art

Museum’s James Dicke Contemporary Art Prize.

Crosby’s art is held in several prominent museums, including the

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the

Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The

National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

(SFMOMA), among others. Crosby currently resides in Los Angeles,

California and is represented by David Zwirner Art Gallery.