Njideka Akunyili, daughter of late Dora Akunyili awarded with Prestigious Prix Canson Prize

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Late Prof. Dora Akunyili's daughter, Njideka Akunyili Crosby was on Tuesday, June 21, awarded with the  Prix Canson Prize, in a ceremony at New York’s Drawing Center. The Award recognizes achievements of international artists who work with paper as their principal medium.

The Enugu-born, Los Angeles-based artist, Njideka, creates large-scale works that combine collage, drawing, painting, and photo transfer to weave complex narratives that reflect an abundance of art historical references and images from her own personal archive, as well as from contemporary culture.

She is known for exploring a wealth of themes in her pieces such as literature, identity, race, assimilation, and memory, but she specializes in teasing out her own relationship with colonialism and representation as an expatriate working in the US.

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 portraiture.”

He told Lauren Cavalli of Artforum that as the jurors deliberated on whom to choose, her work “kept burning in our minds.”

“I think her work really moved us. We felt like if you are going to give a prize to someone you give it to someone who is going to push the medium forward",Litman added

Out of the five nominees for the Prix Canson, four were women, three of which were women of color. The artists shortlisted for the prize were Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, Bethany Collins, David Shrigley, and Lucy Skaer. An exhibition of the works of Akunyili Crosby as well as the four finalists will be on view until July 1.

Accoding to ArtForum.com, Akunyili Crosby will receive over $11,000 of Canson paper and an invitation to be part of a residency that was established by artist and former president of the jury, Tunga, who recently passed.

Established in 2010, the Prix Canson Award celebrates the legacy of the sixteenth-century paper company Canson, which has been supplying aritsts such as Ingres, Delacroix, and Van Gogh, among others, for generations.


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