ARTIST MONOGRAPHS

Nina Chanel Abney

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MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Nina Chanel Abney: Big Butch Energy/Synergy
DELMONICO BOOKS

Combining representation and abstraction, Abney's vibrant works reference gender, sexuality and pop culture

Clth, 7.5 x 11.5 in. / 120 pgs / 52 color / 2 bw. | 5/6/2025 | Awaiting stock
$60.00



Nina Chanel Abney: Big Butch Energy/SynergyNina Chanel Abney: Big Butch Energy/Synergy

Published by DelMonico Books.
Edited with foreword by Alex Gartenfeld. Foreword by Megan Lykins Reich, Lauren Leving. Text by Cheryl Clarke, Briona Simone Jones, J Wortham. Conversation with Nina Chanel Abney, Cheryl Clarke, Briona Simone Jones, theo tyson.

Committed to sharing social realities through fantastic, expansive forms, Nina Chanel Abney is an artist possessed of an iconic style and wit. Through stylized, cubistic and highly charged painterly symbols, she references radical traditions of graphic design and street art to communicate urgent political and cultural realities with immediacy to the largest possible audience. Abney’s paintings and collages use dynamic color and form to draw viewers into complex narratives.
Big Butch Energy/Synergy features Abney’s recent exhibitions at ICA Miami and moCa Cleveland. In these works, Abney mines cinematic and media representations of student Greek life to explore how gender perception and performance is inspired by the legacies of social ritual and visual culture. The complex compositions reference scenes from popular slapstick comedy films such as National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and Porky’s (1981), while citing traditions of Baroque portraiture and fraternity composites. Inspired by her experience as a masculine-of-center woman, with this body of work Abney asks how viewers gender a figure in a work of art.
Nina Chanel Abney was born in 1982 in Harvey, Illinois, and is based in New York, where she attended Parsons School of Design. Abney’s work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Bronx Museum, New York; the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, among others.

This book was published in conjunction with Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami/Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland



PUBLISHER
DelMonico Books

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 7.5 x 11.5 in. / 120 pgs / 52 color / 2 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Forthcoming

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2025 p. 78   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781636811635 TRADE
List Price: $60.00 CAD $90.00 GBP £51.00

AVAILABILITY
Awaiting stock

STATUS: Forthcoming | 5/6/2025

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