“Crib Notes” is a quick-read dossier focused on the artists who ranked on our best-sellers list for ultra-contemporary art in our 2024 Mid-Year Intelligence Report.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby was born in Nigeria but has now spent the majority of her life—25 years—in her adopted home of the U.S. Nevertheless, the influence of her home country is ever-present in her work.
After finishing an MFA at Yale, Akunyili Crosby’s C.V. quickly filled with awards and accomplishments: she represented Nigeria at the 58th Venice Biennale; has had a string of solo shows in major museums including London’s National Portrait Gallery and Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum; received a public commission from the Whitney Museum, and was named a “Woman of the Year” by the Financial Times. Not bad, given that she only turned to a career in art after being rejected by her first choice of medical school.
In order to create her richly textured works, Akunyili Crosby incorporates collage and photo-montage using photographs she purchases when visiting Nigeria, as well as clippings from magazines and downloaded images found over the course of many hours trawling the internet (in an interview with Artnet in 2017 she admitted that this process can often take days).
In addition to pop cultural visual influences, the artist also references Western academic art history, creating paintings that are iconographically layered and universal in their appeal for collectors.
In the Mid-Year Intelligence Report, Akunyili Crosby ranked fourth in our table of best selling ultra-contemporary artists in the first half of 2024. Thread (2012), a large (4.33 x 4.33 ft) canvas showing a woman laying across and kissing a naked man’s back, sold at Sotheby’s New York as part of the ‘Now Evening Action’ for $1,996,000, earning Akunyili Crosby’s place on the best-sellers list. The canvas also won the artist a 50% sell-through rate for her 2024 auctions so far, which placed her in 10th position in Artnet’s list of ‘Most Bankable’ ultra-contemporary artists.
Akunyili Crosby has been a much-sought after star at auction, ever since her debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2014, where she exhibited with Victoria Miro. Since then, her prices have continued to soar.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby,Super Blue Omo (2016). Photo courtesy Victoria Miro.
Key details: Born in Enugu, 1983. Based in Los Angeles.
Galleries representing: David Zwirner, New York; Victoria Miro, London. Victoria Miro gave Akunyili Crosby her first solo show in Europe in 2016 with ‘Portals’, staged at their London branch. The title of the exhibition was shared by a diptych created by Akunyili Crosby that same year, which was purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its collection. Seven years later David Zwirner gave the artist two solo shows in the U.S., displaying her exhibition ‘Coming Back to See Through, Again’ first at Zwirner’s Los Angeles gallery—which inaugurated the location—then in New York.
Breakout Moment: In 2017, Akunyili Crosby became one of 24 winners of the Macarthur “Genius” Followship. The award was created in 1981 to recognise “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction”. It gives winners $800,000 each over the course of five years. Two other artists, Trevor Paglen, and Dawoud Bey, also received the honour that year.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Nwantinti (2012).
Auction record: On November 17, 2022, Akunyili Crosby’s The Beautyful Ones sold at Christie’s New York’s 21st Century Evening Sale for $4,740,000. The huge canvas, measuring 95 x 66 inches, is a touching portrayal of the artist’s sister aged 10, in a dress made from a collage of photos from the family’s collection.
Key Quote: “Something I’ve been very clear about with everybody I work with is, my pace is slow and you cannot push me or force me to work faster … I’m not a machine, I like taking my time.” (New York Times, 2023)