Nina Chanel Abney
Biography
Nina Chanel Abney (born 1982) is an American contemporary artist whose multimedia art, including painting, prints, and large-scale murals, constitutes an immeasurable cultural contribution by exploring themes of politics, race, sexuality, and celebrity. The artist has developed a vibrant visual language that captures the energy of virtual content, such as social media, graphic symbols, and popular culture, which Abney draws upon. Her work challenges viewers with its playfulness, guiding them from the vibrant surface to the hidden depths of reality beneath. In fact, the artist describes her own work as “easy to swallow and hard to digest.”
Abney's pop-surrealist style disrupts conventional linear narratives, presenting the world as we experience it – messy, disconnected, and contradictory. In February 2018, for her seminal exhibition "Hot to Trot. Not." at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Abney created site-specific murals. These murals depicted the busts of three black women against a yellow background, while the question “WHAT?” painted in black underneath provoked viewers to critically consider their gaze and perception of these figures. Abney's work has been acquired into the permanent collections of important institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Burger Collection in Hong Kong.
