Tuesday June 21st at the New York's Drawing Centre, was a day of honor for Nigeria's Njideka Akunyili Crosby, an International Artist who was awarded the Prix Canson Prize which recognizes achievements of Artist who work primarily with paper as their expressive medium.
Akunyili Crosby was born in Enugu Nigeria in 1983, where she lived until the age of sixteen and in 1999 she moved to the United States, where she has remained since then.
Her cultural identity combines strong attachments to the country of her birth and to her adopted home, a hybrid identity that is reflected in her work.
Akunyili Crosby's painterly compositions are complemented and enhanced by carefully chosen and integrated collage elements, predominantly acetone-transfer prints of small photographic images. Some of these images are from the artist's archive of personal snapshots, magazines and advertisements, while others are sourced from the internet; they feature images with a thematic resonance to each particular work. These elements present a compelling visual metaphor for the layers of personal memory and cultural history that inform and heighten the experience of the present.
For Brett Littman, the president of the jury and the director of the Drawing Center, Akunyili Crosby has ''a unique voice in the way that she thinks about and approaches portrait''
Akunyili Crosby's was awarded Foreign Policy’s Leading 100 Global Thinkers of 2015 alongside the Next Generation Prize, New Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015. She is the recipient of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's James Dicke Contemporary Art Prize, 2014 and many other awards.
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