Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s first solo show with Zwirner opened in the gallery’s new space on Western Avenue in Los Angeles’s Melrose Hill in May. Everything sold, but in a rare and generous move, the gallery transferred the display in its entirety to West 19th Street, resulting in the artist’s long-anticipated first solo show in New York City.
At first, Akunyili Crosby’s pervasive use of photographic transfer—taken from her personal archive as well as the breadth of Nigerian life as pictured in mass-media—appears to provide a literal pathway for the world outside of the work to enter: a goal of collage since at least Synthetic Cubism in which it had a certain shock value. Here, instead, the neatly arranged assortment of small images remain in the background, providing a quiet visual humming or buzzing amidst the more robust components of the work.