Njideka Akunyili Crosby in conversation with Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi for Aperture

IO: Many artists take a photograph and then re-create it. But you’re doing more. You’ve said before that when you went into art, you were trying to ensure that you weren’t merely translating, so that when people saw your work, Nigerians, for example, my parents, there are things that they can remember. And it goes beyond the figure. You see these moments, like a table set with tea and breakfast. There’s an ecosystem. It reminds me of what Ernst Bloch called the “intensification of small things.”

NAC: I love that phrase, “the intensification of small things.” It rings true for me

because I see certain objects as specific markers of place and time. A box of Cabin Biscuits will always remind me of boardinghouse in secondary school. And hearing the chorus from a popular Bright Chimezie song will take me back to the long road trips we took to our ancestral hometown for the holidays. With the help of photographs, I am constantly looking for, and trying to remember, such weighted things to use in my art. 

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Image: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born” Might Not Hold True For Much Longer, 2013