“Tradition is not untouchable. We can own it, we can shape it, we can move it the way we need,” Nigerian-born artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby told Harper’s Bazaar.
The artwork is one of 28 pieces commissioned for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which opens later this week on Juneteenth.
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Harper’s explained that Akunyili Crosby’s masterpieces are “technically complex” and while they are designed to “resemble conventional figurative paintings at a distance,” they are actually “composed of dense layers of embedded images, in something like a visual archive.”
If you look closely, you should be able to spot a volume of the Harvard Law Review that was published while Barack Obama was the journal’s first Black president. You’ll also spot Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book, the first album Michelle Obama ever owned.
“Yes, he was the President. But she is incredible,” said Akunyili Crosby.
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