Njideka Akunyili Crosby was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1983 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She has exhibited at venues including MAM Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; National Portrait Gallery, London; MCA Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; SMK Copenhagen; Baltimore Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; New Museum, New York; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Studio Museum, Harlem. In 2019, her work was included in May You Live In Interesting Times, La Biennale di Venezia. Akunyili Crosby is the recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship.

Currently her work is included in Women Painting Women, on view at The Modern, Fort Worth, until 25 September 2022, and in Afro-Atlantic Histories, on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC until 17 July 2022.