NINA CHANEL ABNEY (B. 1982)
Temporary Friends
signed, numbered and dated in black ink '12/35 NINA CHANEL ABNEY 2019' (lower edge on the fifth print)
the complete set of five relief prints in colors, on Hahnemühle Aurora paper
each: 38 1/2 x 29 inches (97.8 x 73.7 cm)
each framed: 42 x 32 1/2 inches (106.7 x 82.6 cm)
Executed in 2019. This work is set number 12 from an edition of 35 plus 8 artist's proofs. Published by Pace Editions, Inc., New York.

These works are sold framed.

PROVENANCE:

Pace Prints, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

NOTES:

Born in 1982 in Harvey, Illinois, Nina Chanel Abney is a celebrated contemporary artist whose bold, graphic works explore the complexities of race, gender, politics, and identity in the 21st century. She received her B.F.A. from Augustana College in Illinois in 2004 and her M.F.A. from Parsons School of Design in New York City in 2007. Now based in New York, Abney has developed a visual language that fuses representation and abstraction, compressing narratives into high-velocity compositions that reflect the chaotic pace of contemporary life. Her works resist linear storytelling in favor of disjointed scenes where time, space, and identity collapse and recombine—producing what she has called “easy to swallow, hard to digest” imagery.

Abney’s aesthetic draws on a rich lineage—from the color theories of Matisse and the fractured geometries of Cubism to the politically charged formalism of Harlem Renaissance artists like Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence. Yet her approach is resolutely of-the-moment, shaped by the language of memes, emojis, and news headlines. As art historian Richard J. Powell has observed, Abney’s works “jolt viewers’ internal sense of equilibrium” through vivid color, geometric fragmentation, and rhythmic, collage-like structure, creating a new kind of history painting grounded in the immediacy of digital-age overload.

This vibrant suite from Nina Chanel Abney, Temporary Friends distills her signature visual language—flat color fields, bold iconography, and playful yet pointed symbolism—into five devotional portraits that reimagine divinity through a contemporary, Black lens. Each figure radiates intimacy, power, and layered meaning, rendering sacred archetypes with modern edge and cultural nuance.

Abney’s work has been widely exhibited internationally. Recent solo presentations include the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2023), ICA Miami (2022), and a major 2022 public commission for the façade of Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall in New York. Past institutional exhibitions have been held at the ICA Boston, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the Nasher Museum of Art. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Rubell Family Collection, and the Dallas Museum of Art.