Nina Chanel Abney
(b. 1982 Harvey, IL)
Mull It Over
2020
Acrylic paint
Courtesy of OZ Art NWA and JustKids

Chicago-based artist Nina Chanel Abney paints in a bold graphic style to create emblematic scenes on canvas, buildings, museum walls, and even basketball courts. Known for broaching topics of injustice, celebrity, politics, and discrimination, Nina describes her art as “easy to swallow, hard to digest.”

A part of OZ Art’s 2020 ARkanvas program, Abney designed this mural to address current and historic accounts of racial inequity in America. She sought to respond to the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the spring and summer of 2020. “STOP”, “DON’T KILL”, “LOVE”, and “BLACK” act as a plea to end the senseless killing of Black men, women, transgender people, and children, married with a message of love and human embrace. Red, black, and green abstracted shapes in the artists’ signature style pay homage to the Pan-African flag, a global symbol of the liberation of Black peoples and a reminder that, as the artist says, “...it can’t be unity unless everyone is respected equally.”

(written by Carlyn Wilder, 2024)