With her magically exuberant color palette, Aliza Nisenbaum tells human stories: painting people, individually or in groups, with their countenance, posture, and immediate surroundings organically composed to depict their connections with their families ,homes, and communitie. Above: Pedacito de Sol (Vero y Marissa), 2022

In this exhibition the artist’s years-long engagement with people at the Queens Museum and its neighborhood, Corona, highlights Nisenbaum’s personal and artistic relationships to the sitters and their environments. The title, derived from the popular Vincente Fernández song, Mexico, Lindo y Querido, translated in English to Mexico, Beautiful and Beloved— reflects her observations of what people value and what the keep close to them. Through Immigrant Movement International, a program that began in 2012, led by artist Tania Bruguera, Mexican-born and New York-based Nisenbaum brought to it a feminist art history class as a way of teaching English to students; that experience led to a series of portraits of the students and their families. 

Nisenbaum returned to the Queens Museum in 2021, and now teaches a Spanish-English bilingual painting workshop to a group of volunteer leaders of the ongoing La Jornada and Queens Museum Cultural Food Pantry. Restaged as El Taller (The Workshop), after the painting above, the exhibition will showcase works created by the students alongside Nisenbaum’s portraits of these participants. 

Other highlights of the exhibition include three portraits of the Museum’s staff members who help facilitate her engagement with the local community, as well as The Ones Who Make It Run (2022, above), a painting commissioned by the Queens Museum and Delta Air Lines for the newly inaugurated Terminal C at LaGuardia Airport. About the artist Images courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery

Save the date: Sunday, June 25, 200-4:30pm: Color | Painting workshop with Aliza Nisenbaum. Register

Queens Museum, New York City Building, Flushing Meadows/Corona Park, Queens NY Info