Nina Chanel Abney (b. 1982, Harvey, IL) works across painting, sculpture, public art, and design. Her practice is rooted in a rigorous inquiry into visual language, how images shape our understanding of ourselves, one another, and the world. Drawing on contemporary mass media, advertising, and public campaigns, she develops layered compositions that embrace color and often unapologetic scale. Paying homage to the color theories of Matisse, the legacy of cubists Picasso and Léger, and the synesthetic sensibilities of Harlem Renaissance greats Douglas and Lawrence, Abney brings these historical movements into contemporary pertinence while broaching subjects as diverse as race, celebrity, religion, politics, and sex — moving fluidly between the popular and the institutional, the graphic and the painterly.
Abney has presented solo exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art; KunsthalKAdE, the Netherlands; Perrotin, Paris; The School | Jack Shainman Gallery, Kinderhook, NY; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, among many others. Major public commissions include Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall façade, the Miami World Center, the High Line, and John F. Kennedy International Airport. Her work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others.
