It's quiet, but at the same time it vibrates.
My name is Njideka Akunyili Crosby and I am an artist.
My work deals a lot with my life and domestic spaces and letting viewers take a glimpse into my everyday life, which is exactly what this does. It's a representation of the artist's mother embroidering, which seems like an activity she probably did a lot.
But it's a lot more than what it represents. So much of the beauty of this piece comes from the tactility of it—the way the Conté crayon sits on the paper. The lights in it are incredibly luminous and the way the dark builds—you can almost see Seurat making these loops—this mark over a mark over a mark. And that begins to echo this action of embroidering that comes with the life his mother would have had in that time period—this quiet, sitting in the corner, and doing needlework. There's this obsessive quality to it, especially to get to the darkest parts, which surrounds a lot of her. We feel the love and connection he has for his mother. It's quiet, but at the same time it vibrates.
I think something I use in my work that I would have picked is to be able to create a space that is very dark, but when someone comes up close to it there is so much information happening. The subtle shifts and passages begin to make themselves known and clear, and it really becomes a whole different experience. That's what creates the intimacy, because you do become part of his world and his space and his life.
Sometimes it's hard to make paintings or drawings that are sentimental or romantic without getting too saccharine, and he doesn't. And I think it's the abstraction of it that holds it back from going to that area. He is walking this line between abstraction and figuration. His ability to use limited vocabulary to tell a very complex story.
I think what makes it contemporary is the ability to work from a tradition, but find a way to make it different, to invent from that tradition. And he's doing that. It's so cheesy to say that they are so beautiful, but you can't deny that—they truly are beautiful drawings. I guess we are taught now to always ask the 'why.'
