Nina Chanel Abney Launches Debut Monograph at New MoMa Design Store in Soho

New York artist and author Nina Chanel Abney, launched her debut monograph, bringing her resplendent art to a packed house at the MoMa Design Store in SoHo this past fall.

Downstairs at the store, which reopened this fall and reintroduced the 1884 landmarked building with details including the original tin ceiling, the multidisciplinary artist sat for an interview with Samantha Friedman, the Curator of Drawings and Prints at MoMA.

Against a wall that displayed several copies of her art book and before an audience of about 40 people, Abney spoke about her creative process, the making of the book, and her work.

In addition to her new mural for the MoMa store, LOVE NYC, which captures the store’s surrounding SoHo area in all its mad beauty, there’s her mural on the Highline that features such New York staples as pigeons, pizza, and the Yankees.

Farther uptown in Lincoln Center is perhaps Abney’s most monumental work yet: San Juan Heal. The current façade of David Geffen Hall, San Jaun Heal is a vibrant portrait of San Juan Hill, the one-time hotbed of Black and Brown culture that, as Abney’s website notes, “was forcibly displaced to make way for redevelopment, including what would become Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.”

Like much of Abney’s work, which spans paintings and collages to installations and public works, San Jaun Heal is both playful and interrogative.

Alongside bright renderings of dancers to the Charleston and Thelonious Monk in his signature beanie are such phrases as, “Urban Renewal?” and “Honor.” Abney thus pays homage to San Juan Hill even as she questions the intent of the developers who displaced it.

San Juan Heal is featured in Abney’s monograph as 1 of 300 works from the past 20 years. There are also several interviews with the artist.

When gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, for example, mentions that her background has given her “a sympathy for the working class” and that her art “addresses everyday people in the city, not only the art elite,” Abney replies with her characteristic candor.

“I am everyday people,” she says. “I come from everyday people...I come from humble beginnings, so being catapulted into this elite art world has been interesting. I still feel like an outsider sometimes, though I am a part of this ‘art world.’”

At the MoMa event, the self-admittedly shy Abney seemed content enough.

Sporting a Yankees cap over a chore coat, the artist elaborated on her work. “These projects are more collaborative,” she said, referencing her new mural at the store. “What can I bring to it that says, ‘SoHo’?”

Even a glance at the mural reveals Abney’s deftness at capturing the neighborhood. Not only are there every day New Yorkers and pigeons standing sentry, there are also yellow taxi placards, the blue A train and E train logos, speeding bicycles, and a sign for Crosby Street. It’s all rendered in Abney’s vibrant cutout design.

As she explained in the interview with Friedman, the artist achieves this look by starting with paper collages and then uploading these images to Adobe Illustrator where she sorts them in her warm, almost childlike style.

For the LOVE NYC mural at the MoMa store, specifically, Abney offers her own versions of pieces in the museum’s collection, such as Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans, Salvador Dalí’s melting clock, Marcel Duchamp’s bicycle, and Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait.

Such particularity speaks to Abney’s broader process of blending the personal with the commercial, of putting her own stamp on everyday items. The artist has even worked with name brands such as Air Jordan and has designed some Jordan sneakers.

At least one attendee at the event was wearing these sneakers, bringing a smile to Abney’s face, but there were also people less knowledgeable about Abney’s work who nonetheless found it intriguing.

“I like modern art,” said Dr. Krysti Vo, who is a member of the MoMa’s Young Patron Council. While not very familiar with Abney’s art, Dr. Vo was “looking forward to learning more about her and her work.”

More versed in Abney’s work was attendee, Jannah Handy, who walked around the new MoMa store as Abney signed copies of her book and jazz played from the overhead speaker.

“Nina is a big artist, and is just known, in the Black Queer space, so I know her from those things,” Handy said. “I’m just really excited about the work that she’s been doing so, when I heard that this event was happening, I had to come.”

With her book officially being released on Oct. 23, Abney’s work will be in the hands of even more people, allowing them to just leaf through the pages.

The book also gives Abney the opportunity to assess her past two decades of work. “It’s a checking-in,” she said.

“I’m constantly trying to reinvent myself,” she continued, never done with the work that lay ahead.