Artwork for Jibade-Khalil Huffman and Njideka Akunyili Crosby are not defined by one medium. Huffman uses a variety of elements in his installations including photos, videos, music and poetry as Crosby uses magazines in her paintings. History is commonly used in their work with their goal to evoke a variety of emotions from their viewers including Huffman’s nostalgia, humor, anxiety, and violence. These artists have similarities, but they present their work in completely different ways with Huffman working in digital media and Crosby creating mixed media. Huffman combines different found pieces of video, photography and poetry with a vision and intended definition behind the work, however, he doesn’t share that meaning with the viewers making…show more content… After marrying her husband, Crosby started to have a dual meaning of home and one way she could combine them, in a way for others to see into her life, was by creating artwork to show the two intertwined (“Njideka”). Crosby analyzes her Nigerian history and creates a visual representation in her work in a way that others, who are not familiar with Nigerian culture, can connect with the message in the art (Solway). She says, “I wanted to put out pictures of these parts of Nigeria that I knew and experienced. People forget that life exists in these places. There are serious things that are wrong in the country, but people exist and thrive… It’s hard to think people matter if you don’t feel connected to them. And so, it’s about making that connection” (Solway). While her culture and life are reflected into her work, it is shown through a series called “Predecessors,” that represents the past including her grandmother’s “insular village life” and her generation as they attempt “to hold onto traditional things in their own way” (Solway). There are many ways and artforms an artist could use to create work when delivering this message to the viewers. The paint medium has been used for centuries and could have easily been a way for Crosby to create her work in the traditional format. Rather than conforming to the way things…show more content… Writer Sam Korman notes, “Huffman explores how the politics and emotions embedded within particular types of speech and imagery haunt personal identity” (Huffman). By listening to music, he finds inspiration in the words. Huffman used to listen to music, imagine how music videos would look for different songs and then put together pieces of films and “stock footage” with the music (Huffman). A lot of his work is developed through experimentation and piecing different things together. Using photoshop he would alter and edit photos he had taken to add different effects and make the image provoke different reactions from the viewers (Bradley). Similar to the way Njideka Akunyili Crosby finds ideas for her work, Huffman looks to African American history for inspiration. He has focused on therapy versus religion and how “existential rage, anger, and depression—things that still aren’t really talked about in the black community”—relate to the African American community (Bradley). Huffman released a list of videos that have inspired him and his idea development as he looked at the videos analyzing them to improve his own work including the John Whitney film Catalog, Nitty Gritty by Shirley Ellis, and Book Down Productions’s My Philosophy
