Cradle Your Conquest 2012

Njideka Akunyili Crosby made this intriguing painting, “Cradle Your Conquest,” with acrylic, collage, and transfers on paper. Right away I can see a checkerboard of green and white squares melding image and pattern. I think about the intimate moment between the two figures. Is it tense, is it tender? I don’t know, but it feels suspended. I try to imagine what it was like to create this, layering all these fragments, searching for a moment of stillness. The patterned skin of the person behind almost camouflages them, and I feel like maybe the artist is pointing at the way people are never just one thing. For me, this feels like a page out of a visual diary, where the everyday meets memory and history. I keep thinking about other artists who blend representation with abstraction. Maybe Akunyili Crosby is in conversation with them, building on their ideas, complicating our sense of how a painting can reveal, conceal, and provoke. And maybe that’s the best we can ask for—to keep that exchange going.