Professor Aliza Nisenbaum in Two Exhibits this Fall

This fall, Professor Aliza Nisenbaum is featured in two exhibits:  a solo exhibit at the Anton Kern Gallery in New York, and a group exhibition in Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.

In New York, the Anton Kern Gallery displays Nisenbaum’s Coreografías, a new body of individual and group portrait paintings. All works reflect the artist’s participation in a variety of group and community activities such as her recent Brixton Station residency or her engagement with a downtown NYC salsa dancing group. According to The New Yorker, this exhibit is a display of Nisenbaum’s ability to paint politically minded works with a joy for color and pattern: “[...] her exhibition of taut and tender pictures must be seen in person to be fully appreciated.” The show closes on Nov. 2, 2019.

At the ICA, the group exhibit titled When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration Through Contemporary Art considers how contemporary artists are responding to the migration, immigration, and displacement of people today. The exhibit borrows its title from the poem “Home” by Warsan Shire, a Somali-British poet who gives voice to the experiences of refugees. The line comes from the following stanza:

        your neighbors running faster than you
        breath bloody in their throats
        the boy you went to school with
        who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
         is holding a gun bigger than his body
        you only leave home
         when home won’t let you stay.

According to the museum, “this exhibition highlights diverse artistic responses to migration ranging from personal accounts to poetic meditations, and features a range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, painting, and video.” This show will run from Oct. 23, 2019 - Jan. 26, 2020.

Nisenbaum was born in Mexico City and received her BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been a resident at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee; and SOMA Summer, Mexico City. Fellowships and grants include the Rema Hort Mann NYC award, and the Fellowship for Immigrant Women Leaders from NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA). She has also been a participating artist at Immigrant Movement International, Corona Park, Queens. She has been widely reviewed and is included in the book Vitamin P3, New Perspectives in Painting.

Nisenbaum is a recent recipient of the Provost’s Junior Faculty Diversity Development Award, Columbia University.