Late Dora Akunyili's daughter, Njideka Crosby is expecting her first child with American husband
Njideka Akunyili-Crosby,
daughter of late NAFDAC Chairman and former Minister of Information, Dora
Akunyili, is expecting her first child with American husband Justin Crosby.
In an interview with the Guardian UK, the
Victoria Miro artist talked about impending motherhood, how she took her first
art class at 16, her mother, Mean Girls at Yale University, her heroine
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and the debt she owes Harlem's Studio Museum.
She made an interesting
revelation about her late mother. Akunyili, then a poor lecturer at the
University of Nigeria Nsukka, was diagnosed as needing major surgery and was
given 12, 000 from a work insurance fund to go to London and have
treatment. But the London doctor said it was a misdiagnosis, so she gave the
money back.
"Nigeria is not a country where anybody
ever asks for you receipts" she explains. "And knowing how poor we
were at the time, it's amazing that she didn't keep it"
Born in 1983 in Enugu,
Njideka is seven months pregnant with her first baby, though you would barely
notice.
"People in LA say, ‘what’s your birth
plan’, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know!’ My whole mind has just been on this
show," she says, her laughter resonating around the vast white room. She
adds that, being from Nigeria, the whole fuss around pregnancy in California
seems a little unnecessary. I’m from the village," she says, wryly,
"and women there seem to give birth just fine without all this
stuff."
She moved to the US at
the age of 16, and discovered that her homeland didn’t really matter to the
outside world, other than as the scene of crises.
"I don’t want to write off the horrible
things that happen in various African countries, but we’re not all walking
around thinking about Aids and Boko Haram all the time. Those things affect us,
but lots of times our problems are the silly daily problems that you have here.
How do I get a date? Will my pay cheque be enough for this dress I want to wear
to the wedding?"
Njideka revealed she met
her heroine, acclaimed Nigerian author, who also moved from Nigeria to the US
to study, a couple of times.
"She has this short story where the main
character goes to a writing workshop, and she writes about someone whose boss
is sexually harrassing her. And the teacher says to her, ‘Why don’t you write
about an authentic African experience?’ Well, what is authentic – you think we
don’t have these issues in Nigeria, too? Stuck in traffic, 30 minutes late for
a meeting – that is the bulk of life. It’s a horrible example, but even in the
midst of a tragedy like the Ebola epidemic – most people are probably just
living their lives. That’s why so many of my figures [in the paintings] are
really doing nothing. I think people sensationalise places in their heads, so I
wanted to show just how normal life is in Nigeria"
Check out her full
interview below:
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