In Nina Chanel Abney’s solo exhibition “Winging It” at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles the artist didn’t preach—but didn’t let anyone off the hook either—creating a space that focused on where people place their faith and find community: through social media, popular culture, patriotic myths—and, of course, religion. To do this, Abney transformed the front room of the gallery into a fully immersive church experience, grounding the viewer in the original third space.
In the installation Holy Hour 24/7, 2025, a neon wall sculpture hung within a vinyl mural inspired by a reredos (an ornamental screen covering the wall behind a church altar). The sculpture depicted a Black Jesus, who greeted visitors with open arms and a rainbow halo. The installation reimagines the church as a more inclusive space, with rainbow Pride symbols at the top-left corner among glyphs that repeat throughout the bodies of work present: crosses, the letter X, hands, hearts, and dollar signs. Two heads are surrounded by the initials WWJD (What would Jesus do?)—one laughing, and the other frowning. Letter-board signs, whose typography and style resembles those of signs found outside small-town churches across America, have been co-opted to replace the notoriously homophobic rhetoric often displayed in such venues with messaging that at first appears to be positive but is also humorously cynical: MO MONEY. MO PROBLEMS. NO MONEY. YO PROBLEM, and, JESUS SAVES BUT DO YOU. Elsewhere, a series of four large collages drew inspiration from stained-glass windows. Throwing Light, Catching Shade #1, 2024, depicted a pair of Black hands raised in praise under a cross within a golden halo in the upper arch. The word PEACE is set within a pink box amid a madras background and stylized images of a cross, a tree, a smiling face, and doves. The area below portrays another smiling face next to a white plate with a hand, an eye, and two noses, above the word BLESSINGS set next to a $100 price tag, which instantiates tensions inherent in thecommodification of religion. The sanctuary is completed by rows of wooden pews and a playlist of music that changed weekly, Heaven’s Hotline,2025, assuming the role of the choir.
In Loads of Grace, 2024, a collage spanning four panels, Abney drew from art-historical referents to depict a Laundromat where haloed figures perform everyday acts of kindness and exhibit humility and respect. The leftmost panel depicts a figure reaching down to pick up another’s dropped laundry and a crucifix. The person who was assisted in the far-left panel appears to “pay it forward” by picking up a baby in a pink basket in the center-left panel, the work’s time and space similar to those found in medieval and Renaissance paintings that employ continuous narration.
In Pursuit of Happiness,2024,one of two sculptures within the exhibition, a smiling Black figure lifts an American flag over its head while two frowning disembodied heads flank its torso on a lower tier. A grouping of multicolored candles could suggest an altar of hope or a vigil of despair, while a small drawer filled with “gold” coins lies open at the base. The pyramidal composition suggests not only aspirations of wealth but a trinity of religion, politics, and commerce. On the reverse side, a featureless Black figure holds a flag inspired by David Hammons’s African American Flag, 1990, with the usual red, white, and blue replaced by red, black, and green. In contrast to the “front,” the composition of the flip side is devoid of candles and coins, with smiling heads appearing on either side of the central figure.
Abney’s acrylic paintings displayed text that, like scripture, simultaneously uplifts and condemns. In The Glow Up, 2025, a quote read by Viola Davis’s character in the 2011 movie The Help—yOU IS KIND, YOU IS SMART, YOU IS IMPORTANT—was repeated in blue, green, and black text among interspersed glyphs on a hot-pink background. Though the quote was originally meant to be inspirational in the film, it is now used as a shade-throwing meme. Perform and Perish, 2025, displayed Tyra Banks’s infamous castigations sourced from America’s Next Top Model, with the expressions of disappointment masked in mentor-speak lettered amid a green background that appears to simulate a chalkboard. The background is flanked on either side by panels filled by disembodied Black heads.
Abney’s latest exhibition successfully employed the iconography and narrative devices of historical religious art and architecture, offering compositions that reevaluate where we locate community—and how and where we place, and misplace, our faith.
