Chunn works primarily as a painter; she uses symbols, signage, and mapping strategies to advance her commentary on the world at large. Her work evokes a range of emotions, sometimes diametrically opposed, including outrage, cynicism, laughter, grief, and disbelief. Her images relate to the authority and directness of rubber stamps in how they quickly and universally convey meaning. Chunn is a politically engaged artist and uses her work to draw attention to the ways that we live. Chunn is largely recognized for the yearlong Front Pages project, where she applied images and text to provide commentary on every cover page of The New York Times from January 1 to December 31, 1996. Since 2004, she has focused on Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear, a painting series centered on the terrorism crisis in the US and the panic it perpetuates. 

In 1988, Nancy Chunn had her first show with her current representing gallery, the Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York City. She has received the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship award in painting in 1985 and 1995 and was commissioned in 1993-1995 for a permanent painting installation in the Uptown Branch Library of Chicago as well as PS 125, in Queens, NY in 1995. For decades Chunn has been actively exhibiting in the United States at venues such as Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, Marcecl Sitcoske Gallery in San Francisco, Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., Salt Lake Art Center, Parsons School of Design and New Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, and abroad at Zagreb's Museum of Contemporary Art in Croatia. 

Courtesy of the Jewish Museum