Hobson's Choice

Nina Chanel Abney describes her art as “easy to swallow, hard to digest.” Her playful yet provocative visual language confronts pressing social issues by drawing from popular culture and referencing the information overload of social media and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. Made around the time of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Hobson’s Choice, like much of Abney’s work, addresses issues of racial history and constitutional freedoms in the United States. Disembodied heads and bystanders observe two central figures engaged in combat, uncontained by the bars and barriers scattered throughout the composition. Exclamations like “OW” and “GO,” punctuated by emoji-like flames, underscore the violence and frenzy of the moment. Abney adds another layer of complexity to the work through her title; “Hobson’s Choice” is a situation in which one must choose between something or nothing, otherwise known as “take it or leave it.”