Mexican-Jewish Artist Aliza Nisenbaum on Her Colorful Portraits of 'The Other' in Society

JEWISH TELEGRAPH AGENCY 
By Alan Grabinsky
London Underground: Brixton Station and Victoria Line Staff, 2019 (Courtesy of the artist and Art on the Underground, London; Anton Kern Gallery, New York/© Aliza Nisenbaum)
Mexican-Jewish artist Aliza Nisenbaum sees a failure to communicate in the modern world — and her work as a way to counteract the dilemma. “The problem today is that we are not sitting with real people, face to face, we are shouting to each other on social media,” Nisenbaum says. She looks to fight this cultural tendency through her paintings, whose intense, sensuous color forces the viewer to inhale the humanity of her subjects. Influenced by the work of Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and his theory of “the Other,” which is grounded in Jewish ethics of responsibility and humanism, Nisenbaum aims to portray the “back regions” of everyday life — a term coined by the Jewish sociologist Erving Goffman. [More]
Alberto, David and Aliza with mural by Roberto Cueva del Rio, 2019
MOIA’s (Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs) NYC Women’s Cabinet, 2016