Aliza Nisenbaum

Aliza spends many hours getting to know her subjects: sitting with them in person, becoming a part of their communities, and learning about their lives. As this became an impossibility during the pandemic--unequipped with people, canvas, and paint--Nisenbaum turned to drawing from memory, previous paintings, studies, and photographs, taking it as an opportunity and challenge to deepen her approach to the abstraction of faces. She also turned to drawing flowers, inspired by daily long walks around her temporary new Los Angeles neighborhood. Throughout the anxiety of isolation, Nisenbaum found comfort in nature and the plants and flowers she discovered, which also provided further solace by reminding her of the vegetation of her place of birth, Mexico. During her walks, she stayed in touch over the phone with family and friends, and many former sitters. Thus, succulents, sunflowers, and lively bouquets were combined with her recalled portraits in the form of diptychs.

Her diptychs from that time, all of which paired a portrait with a plant, became a way to symbolically send her subjects flowers. Nisenbaum thought and worried particularly of friends and former sitters in immigrant communities who were especially vulnerable and in high-risk neighborhoods, yet felt helpless at the inability to offer a hug or some sort of simple token of warmth. The pairings create a symbiotic energy, both images equally rendered in loving detail by the artist: portrait and flower are imbued with palpable gestures of care and love. Particularly during such a moment of isolation, these diptychs were emblems of touch that during distancing was a challenge to fulfill.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Mexico City, Aliza Nisenbaum makes portrait paintings that are the manifestation of exchanges with her subjects over time. Collaborating with communities, she employs the focused attention of observational painting to create the conditions for close-looking. Distinct social groups are at the foreground of her work, including immigrant communities, dancers, members of grassroot organizations, subway, airport, and health workers. She engages with these groups on various levels, sharing resources, skills and ultimately, social representation. Her lengthy engagement with her subjects allows her to understand their histories and dignity beyond the space of portraiture. Often lushly decorated with patterned textiles found in her sitter’s homes and tiles from workplace settings, she makes visible the material conditions, friendships and alliances of particular work and leisure environments.

Nisenbaum’s work is currently featured at the Metropolitan Opera House. The four painting presentation, curated by Dodie Kazanjian, chronicles Nisenbaum’s year-long relationship with the “Divas” (singers) of the opera La Traviata, in addition to the support staff who are essential to the House’s operation. At the end of May 2024, the artist will be unveiling a commissioned mosaic by the Queens Museum and LaGuardia Airport, at the airport's new Terminal B. Nisenbaum’s mural focuses on sixteen Delta and Port Authority employees as well as their service providers, among the many thousands who keep the terminal running smoothly each day. The work is based on a painting that includes pilots, flight attendants, police officers, firefighters, customer service agents, Urban Pathways staff (homeless outreach), taxi dispatchers, and individuals working in facilities and maintenance. Together, these employees represent the strength and diversity of the Delta and Port Authority community; as individuals, their dynamic poses and winning smiles convey their unique personalities and indelible contributions to their workplace.

In 2023, Nisenbaum had her first institutional exhibition in New York City at the Queens Museum, Queens: Lindo y Querido, which chronicled 10 years of working closely with the neighborhood of Corona, Queens. Adapted from the popular Vincente Fernández song “Mexico, Lindo y Querido”— translated in English to “Mexico, Beautiful and Beloved” — the exhibition title highlights Nisenbaum’s personal and artistic relationships to the sitters and their environments, with careful attention paid to expressions of what people value, as expressed through material culture. The artist’s involvement with the residents of Corona, Queens started in 2012 when she volunteered for Immigrant Movement International. Led by artist Tania Bruguera, this hyper-local, multi-year project was created in collaboration with the Museum and Creative Time to engage the neighborhood’s largely Spanish speaking community members. Nisenbaum taught a feminist art history class there as a way of teaching English to students, and that experience led to a series of portraits of the students and their families.

In 2021, Nisenbaum’s portraits of salsa music and dance communities in Kansas City were the subject of the city’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art’s sixth annual Atrium Project. Throughout 2020 and 2021, Nisenbaum communicated with the musicians and dancers via video from her studios in Los Angeles and New York. Their conversations resulted in portraits that embody the personality, interests, and energy of each individual and their relationship to salsa. In 2020-2021, Nisenbaum’s solo exhibition at the Tate Liverpool featured a series of portraits of UK healthcare workers.

Aliza’s work has been included in notable group exhibitions: Gwangju Biennial (2023), at the ICA Boston; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; the Museu de Arte de São Paulo; the Drawing Center, NY; the New Britain Museum, CT; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She has also presented her work at The Whitney Biennial, NY, The Biennial of the Americas; the MCA, Denver; and the Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial in Mexico City.

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Tate, the Aishti Foundation, The Hirshhorn Museum, The Rennie Museum, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Whitney Museum of American art, among others both private and public. She is represented by Anton Kern Gallery in NY.