Big Butch Energy/Synergy : Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia

In Big Butch Energy/Synergy, Nina Chanel Abney brings together recent large-scale works that examine Black identity and queerness through coming-of-age narratives. The artist broaches these subjects playfully, creating approachable images that focus on her personal experiences as a masculine-of-center woman. Abney executes these works primarily in collage, streamlining the picture plane with a bold, graphic style that highlights the subtleties of the expressions and poses of her dynamic figures. Working on a massive format, she invites viewers to experience the collage’s rich pictorial spaces on the scale of history painting.

In this body of work, Abney expands on understandings of collegiate storylines that have centered white hetero characters in popular films like Animal House, focusing instead on the representation of Black masculine women. The figures in these grand works play out the routines and dramas of college life in settings like school dances, sporting events, and the gym, offering glimpses into the group dynamics and formative life events of Abney’s invented crew of characters. The artist uses these settings and figures to examine signifiers of maleness and femaleness, celebrating those who reject normative presentations of gender.