Experimenting with digital identies and the viewing experience of traditional art.

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 Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; the Rubell Family Collection, Florida; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; amongst others.

As part of an artist in residence program with the CryptoPunks Projects team - Nina Chanel Abney created 500 piece avatar collection for the metaverse and future gameplay that reimagines the viewing experience of her art.

Algorithmically generated then hand-curated by Abney - she invites collectors to become a part of her work for the first time. Fueled by an interest in digital realities and the future of art technologies, Abney utilizes the 3D medium to allow collectors the opportunity for motion design and metaverse gameplay.

Crafting works that are as playful as they are profound, her digital worldview reflects on virtual versus real world identities. In direct confrontation of the speculative differences evident between digital avatars based on gender and skin tone - Abney created hybridized figures that fuse racial components and blur the lines between masculine and feminine.

Through these amalgamations of external signifiers, Abney seeks to challenge the notion of an inherent societal “value” and pushes the viewer to engage with their own implicit biases. Each uniquely generated avatar shines a lens on concealment and the self-fashioning prevalent in digital spaces and online interactions.
The culmination of the project was an interactive presentation of the works at Jack Shaiman’s gallery “The School” — presented in context with Abney’s real-world sculptures which those digital models had informed.