The Nigerian Artist Behind the Obamas’ Historic New Portrait
The Nigerian Artist Behind the Obamas’ Historic New Portrait
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, born in 1983 in Enugu, Nigeria, is a Nigerian-American artist based in Los Angeles. She created the first official joint portrait of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Titled The Obamas: Springing Forth (2026), the large-scale mixed-media work measures approximately 9 by 10 feet and now hangs in the Hope and Change Lobby of the Center’s museum building, an area open to the public.
Akunyili Crosby’s father, Chike Akunyili, was a surgeon. Her mother, Dora Akunyili (1954–2014), served as Director-General of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), where she led high-profile campaigns against counterfeit drugs. Many Nigerians recognize Njideka through this family connection. She moved to the United States for education, earning a certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later degrees from Swarthmore College and Yale School of Art. She is a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant recipient.
Artistic Practice
Akunyili Crosby works in a layered, collage-like style that combines painting, drawing, photography, and photo transfers. She draws from personal and cultural archives—family photos, magazine clippings, fabric patterns, and historical images—to explore themes of memory, migration, identity, and the African diaspora in domestic and intimate settings. Her surfaces often feature solvent transfers of found images, creating dense, textured compositions that feel like visual diaries or palimpsests of lived experience.
For the Obama portrait, she spent months researching the couple’s lives. She studied interviews, memoirs, speeches, family photographs (including images by official White House photographer Pete Souza), and personal artifacts. The final work integrates these elements into a cohesive scene that captures both public legacy and private moments.
The Portrait: The Obamas: Springing Forth
The painting shows Barack and Michelle Obama in an informal, warm setting. Obama appears seated on a table in a dark suit, while the composition weaves in symbolic references: Michelle Obama’s childhood home in Chicago’s South Shore neighbourhood, family keepsakes, books, historical objects, and cultural motifs tied to their journeys. The dense layering of transferred images and painted elements creates a rich, tapestry-like background full of personal and historical resonance.
The title Springing Forth evokes growth, renewal, and emergence—ideas central to the Obamas’ story and the Center’s mission. Obama described the piece as reflecting “so many chapters” of their lives. Michelle Obama praised the “life and joy” infused in the work. The portrait was unveiled privately on June 14, 2026, and opened to the public around Juneteenth.
Significance
This commission places Akunyili Crosby in a select group of artists shaping how the Obamas’ legacy is visually remembered. It is one of 28 original artworks commissioned for the Center. Unlike the earlier official White House portraits (Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley and Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald), this joint work emphasizes narrative depth, family, and cultural continuity through Akunyili-Crosby’s distinctive technique.
Her approach—rooted in Nigerian heritage, American life, and the blending of personal archives with broader history—aligns with the Center’s focus on storytelling and community. Visitors encounter the portrait immediately upon entering the museum lobby, where it serves as both a greeting and an invitation to explore the layered histories it contains. Akunyili-Crosby continues to produce work that bridges continents and generations. The Obama portrait extends her practice on a public, monumental scale while maintaining the intimate, memory-driven quality that defines her art. It stands as a contemporary document of one of America’s most prominent families, filtered through the vision of a Nigerian-born artist whose own story of migration and legacy echoes aspects of theirs.
