Nina Chanel Abney facts for kids

Nina Chanel Abney is an American artist who lives in New York. She was born in Harvey, Illinois. Nina is a modern artist and painter. She uses her art to explore ideas about race, gender, and pop culture. She also looks at politics in her work.

About Nina Abney

In 2015, Nina Abney shared that she and her father were rebuilding their relationship. After a fire at their home, Nina and her mother moved to Matteson, Illinois. There, she went to Rich South High School. Nina said that other students sometimes teased her for "talking white." To connect with them, she would draw pictures of famous Black people from pop culture. This is how Nina started to explore art more seriously in high school.

She always knew she wanted to be an artist. However, she wasn't sure what that would look like. She said it took time to find her voice to speak about important issues. One example is the #blacklivesmatter movement. Nina is always surprised that her art has been shown in museums. Some things that inspire her are the cartoon series South Park and hip-hop music. She believes that "anyone can be an artist if they want to create and express themselves." Her advice to young artists is simple: "Just do it."

Nina's Art Style

Nina Abney's art uses symbols and bright colors. She presents new ways to think about serious topics. She wants viewers to form their own ideas. Her work mixes fun and serious elements. Nina has said her art is "easy to swallow, hard to digest." This means it looks simple but makes you think deeply.

Nina does not plan or sketch her paintings beforehand. Instead, she works by feeling and rhythm. She asks herself, "What colors feel right next to each other?" Improvisation is a big part of her process. She doesn't know what the final painting will look like. Her art is a response to what she feels at that moment. Jeffrey Deitch, an art dealer, once compared her skill to the artist Keith Haring.

Nina Abney's paintings are often graphic and cubist. She uses blocks of color in her paintings and murals. She uses techniques like spray painting, collaging, and layering shapes. She doesn't want her figures to be "boxed in." She wants her art to have many "answers." Nina likes to change the races and genders of her figures. This helps viewers let go of old ideas about paintings. She has said, "I like to bring everybody's perspective in... I'd approach it from both sides of the story." She uses symbols in new ways to show a deeper message. But she also keeps the image looking simple. For example, in one painting, Nina uses a heart in many ways. Depending on where it is and its purpose, it can have different meanings.

Nina also likes to keep humor in her work. This is because the topics she paints are often very serious. She does this by using bright colors and drawing "cartoonish" figures. Nina feels she works so naturally now that she can't go back to her old painting style. She wants her art to stay important. She wants the message of her paintings to change with what is important in the future. This way, her art "can be read in an entirely new way" as times change.

Nina's Education

In high school, one of Nina's teachers encouraged her to take AP art classes. This led her to attend Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in 2004. She studied both studio art and computer science. While in college, Nina joined a student walkout. They were protesting the lack of different backgrounds among the teachers. This experience helped her art become more focused on political ideas.

After college, she took a year off. She worked on an assembly line at Ford Motor Company. She quit after seeing a co-worker get hurt in an accident. After that, she started painting every day. She was accepted to the Chicago Art Institute and the Parsons School of Design. She earned her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Parsons in 2007. Nina decided to move to Jersey City to go to Parsons. She wanted to gain "a sense of independence."

Nina's Career

Nina Abney is well known for her large, colorful, graphic paintings. Four of her works are in the 30 Americans exhibition. This show was put together by the Rubell Museum. It features art by African American artists from the last thirty years. The exhibition has traveled to museums and galleries across America since 2008. Her art has also been shown at the Whitney Museum. It has also been seen at the Jack Shainman Gallery and the Kravets Wehby Gallery in Chelsea.

When she first started her career, Nina felt her art had to focus on race. But now, her work has changed. It focuses more on whatever is important to her at the moment. She said, "Now [it’s] more reflective of what I actually deal with. Not that I don't deal with racism, but that's not my whole life."

In 2007, Nina received attention for her painting Class of 2007. She made this painting for her MFA thesis show. The painting is a diptych, which means it has two panels. In one panel, she is shown as a blonde officer with a gun. In the second panel, her MFA classmates, who were all white, are painted as Black inmates in orange uniforms. She said that putting her classmates in her painting was "nothing personal...when I put people in my paintings now—it’s not you, it’s just a face." She also said the show was "[her] only chance to get the attention of a gallery." The Rubell family, who own the Rubell Museum in Miami, Florida, bought the painting. Nina Abney was the youngest artist to show work in the 30 Americans exhibition. This show brought together important African American artists who were making a difference in the art world.

Nina worked at THEARC, a program run by the Corcoran Gallery of Art. It was an after-school program called ArtReach. She helped young people create a permanent mural in the DC area. This program taught about how important celebrities are in culture. It also showed how celebrities connect to issues of race in the country.

Nina Abney has given talks at universities and art centers across the nation. In 2013, she was a guest speaker at the New York Academy of Art. In 2015, she gave a presentation at the Summit Series in Utah.

In 2020, Nina Abney worked with Mattel Creations and Pharrell Williams' non-profit, Black Ambition Inc. They created the UNO "Nina Chanel Abney Deck." This is a special UNO deck that features Nina's unique figures and art style.

In 2022, Nina Abney worked with the sports company Nike. She designed her very own Air Jordan Shoe.

In 2023, Nina Abney worked with the shoe and clothing company TIMBERLAND. She designed her own special boot by "reimagining the Yellow Boot."

News sources like the Huffington Post, Forbes, and Elle have talked about Nina Abney's art. They discuss how she addresses important political topics by mixing genders and races in her work.

Art Exhibitions

Dirty Wash was Nina Abney's first art show. It was held at the Kravets/Wehby gallery in the spring of 2008. Many major art collectors came to see it. The show sold out in just a few days.

In November 2017, she had her first solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City. It was called Nina Chanel Abney: Seized the Imagination. This show happened at the same time as Safe House. Safe House was another solo show curated by Piper Marshall at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York City. Nina is known for her colorful paintings. They are sometimes busy or wild, filled with pop culture images and current events. Nina's art often shows that unfairness and violence are a part of daily life for people of color. In both shows, Nina wanted to fight against the negative ideas that media often shows about African Americans. In December 2017, Nina created her first 3D art project. It was at 29Rooms in Los Angeles. It was called Fair Grounds. This was an interactive series of sculptures that looked and felt like a childhood playground.

Her first solo museum exhibition was Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush. It opened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in February 2017. Marshall N. Price organized the show. It included about 30 of her paintings, watercolors, and collages. It showed 10 years of her work. The art included many references to art history. These included medieval icons, old still lifes, and artists like Henri Matisse and John Wesley. Her works showed ideas about self-love, celebrity culture, how women are seen, race issues, and police unfairness. Nina said that before she started this show, she "didn’t know what it was going to look like." She got many cans of spray paint in different colors. She painted the walls black and taped up shapes to begin. Before the show opened, she said she "hoped that it makes people angry and a mix of reactions."

In her February 2018 exhibition Hot to Trot. Not. at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Nina Abney created murals on the main staircase. One mural shows the faces of three Black women against a yellow background. The numbers 1, 2, 3 are listed under each one. Next to the figures, Nina painted "WHAT?" in black letters. This makes viewers look at the art and think deeply about its meaning.

In September 2018, Nina Abney organized a group exhibition at the Jeffery Deitch gallery called Punch. This exhibition focused on current social and political issues. The show featured Nina herself and some of her close friends. It included paintings, photographs, and sculptures.

Other exhibitions include:

• I Dread To Think, 2012
• Always a Winner, 2015
• Royal Flush, 2017
• Fair Grounds, 2017
• Safe House, 2017
• Seized the Imagination, 2017
• Hot to Trot. Not., 2018
• Chicago Cultural Center, 2018
• Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles & California African American Museum, 2018
• Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, 2019

Art Collections

Nina Abney's art is part of many important collections. These include the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Rubell Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Books About Nina Abney

• 30 Americans: Rubell Family Collection. Rubell Family Collection (publisher), 2012. By Robert Hobbs, Glen Logon, Franklin Sirmans and Michele Wallace. ISBN 978-0-9821195-5-6.
• Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush. Duke University, 2017. By Marshall N. Price. ISBN: 978-0-938989-41-7.