For Earth Day, Dwellers: Native One by artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby has been installed at the Museum of the African Diaspora as part of #ACoolMillionCampaign, a public arts initiative for climate awareness led by artists & institutions to expand environmental justice programming and support land conservation.

Crosby’s work features dense foliage of endemic plants from Eastern Nigeria. Photographic imagery embodies the leaves, including an advertisement for African wax-cloth fabric and a personal photograph of the artist and her sister visiting their ancestral village. The layered composition evokes ecosystems of movement of diaspora across the globe.

Initiated by Micki Meng and Haley Mellin, A Cool Million is a partnership between For Freedoms, Art and Climate Action, Art into Acres, and fourteen arts institutions across California to install climate-related artworks on billboards, museum facades, and public spaces.

Learn more at acoolmillion.org.

‍

‍

ARTIST STATEMENT
Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s Dwellers: Native One features dense foliage of endemic plants from Eastern Nigeria. Photographic imagery embodies the leaves, including an advertisement for African wax-cloth fabric and a personal photograph of the artist and her sister visiting their ancestral village. The layered composition evokes ecosystems of movement of diaspora across the globe.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Dwellers: Native One, 2019. Acrylic, transfers, color pencil, and collage on paper. ©Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Courtesy of the Artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner.

‍

Participating Institutions  
The Broad, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Cantor Arts Center, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Getty Museum, Hammer Museum, ICA San Francisco, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of the African Diaspora, The Museum of Contemporary Art, REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), San José Museum of Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

Participating Artists
Katherine Bernhardt (@kbernhardt2014), Petra Cortright (@petra_cortright), Njideka Akunyili Crosby (@njidekaakunyilicrosby), Sayre Gomez (@_sayre_gomez_), Hulda Guzmán (@huldaguzman), Lynn Hershmann Leeson (@lynn.l.leeson), Madeline Hollander (@mchollander), Josh Kline (@joshklinejoshkline), Hugo McCloud (@hugomccloudstudio), R. H. Quaytman (@quaytman_quaytman), David Benjamin Sherry (@davidbenjaminsherry), Robin F. Williams (@robinfrancescawilliams), and Nicole Wittenberg (@nwitts)

‍

Presented By: A Cool Million, For Freedoms, Art into Acres, and Art + Climate Action

‍