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Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a relatively young, born in 1983, an artist from the United States of Nigerian origin. Has citizenship of both countries. At the age of 17 she came to the USA to study and since then she has been living and working in California. She belongs to a group of African artists who skillfully use their cultural roots and life in the United States to find their own artistic niche. The artist began her series of paintings “The Beautyful Ones” in 2014 and consists of portraits of Nigerian children, as well as members of the artist’s family, created from personal photographs, and more recently from photographs taken during her frequent visits to Nigeria. It is as if she is leafing through photographs-memoirs of her childhood and youth and her travels to her homeland. We see how she marks the generational differences between post-colonial Africa, with its idealistic hopes for a better future, and modern Africa, which in many ways emulates pop culture and consumerism. “The Beautyful Ones” No. 8, 2018 is a portrait of a little boy in a traditional agbada tunic with a serious face standing in the living room and behind him a whole collection of various stereo equipment. A similar set of stereo equipment reappears in “The Beautyful Ones” #9, 2018, a work that depicts three children, this time in a less formal pose, in a home environment that also includes a television, photographs and books. These images of the interior contrast with the street scene depicted in “The Beautyful Ones” #7, 2018, which shows the girl with her arms crossed, her eyes confidently meeting the viewer’s gaze, her bright yellow T-shirt echoing the bright hue of the cabs that surround her. In each of these seemingly everyday scenes, accurate in style, certain details draw our attention to the multifaceted nature of the characters. The result of the artist’s work was the sale in 2017 of her “The Beautyful Ones” at Christie’s in London for a record $3,075,774. A year earlier, Time magazine named Njidika Akuniili Crosby “Woman of the Year”. Last year, her work was featured at the Venice Biennale and at the African Art Exhibition “I am…” at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art in Washington DC.
