Aliza Nisenbaum
(Painting of a young Mexican woman 2015)
While searching for a female artist to write about, I was interested in finding someone whose work aligned with some of my interests and passions. Immigration has been an ongoing controversial issue for the longest time, so I was interested in finding an artist that focused on immigration and made immigrants shine. When I read about Aliza Nisenbaum, I knew that she was the artist that I had been hoping to find. Aliza is a 39-year-old woman who grew up in Mexico City. She is the daughter of a Scandinavian-American mother and a Russian Jewish father. She currently lives in Harlem. She is currently teaching undergraduate students at Columbia University. For the past four years, Aliza has been painting portraits of undocumented immigrants. These portraits mainly consist of people from Central America and Mexico who are living in New York City. She does so to give "recognition and dignity to individuals who are often obliged to live in the shadows."
She was involved with the Immigrant Movement International five years ago, where she volunteered to teach a class. Many of her students did not know English, so to teach them, she decided to do so through feminist art history. Throughout that class, women learned more than just about colors and landscapes. Several women were going through domestic violence, and through the images that they learned about, they learned a lot about themselves as well. Aliza's students began trusting her and telling her stories about how they came to America. After hearing their stories, Aliza asked if they would sit for portraits which many agreed.
Whenever Aliza paints, she values the opinion of the person she is painting. She lets them decide what they want to wear and how they want to be portrayed. She also prefers to incorporate brightly colored walls in her artwork. Although immigration is currently an intense issue, Aliza wanted to make sure that she did not begin to paint portraits of immigrants just as a career move to receive more attention. She mentions how "After coming into close contact with these people through my volunteer teaching and seeing how heroic and inspiring they were to me, I decided to memorialize them in portraits. I hope my work is more complex than just the issue of immigration."
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