Born in Mexico City, Aliza Nisenbaum makes portrait paintings that are manifestations 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 foregrounded, including immigrant communities, dancers, members of grassroot organizations, subway, airport, and health workers. Nisenbaum engages with these groups on various levels, sharing resources, skills and ultimately, through the intimacy of portraiture as social representation. Through lengthy engagement with her subjects, the artist gains a deeper understanding of individual and collective histories, and accords a dignity to the exchange– that exceeds the space of portraiture. Often lushly decorated with patterned textiles found in her sitter’s homes and tiles from workplace settings, Nisenbaum makes visible the material conditions, friendships and alliances of particular work and leisure environments.

Nisenbaum earned a BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2001, and an MFA from the same institution in 2005. Selected solo and two-person exhibitions include The Barak Obama Presidential Center  (June 2026)  Des Moines Art Center (2025–2026); The Metropolitan Opera, New York (2023–2024); Queens Museum, New York (2023); Delta Air Lines x Queens Museum at LaGuardia Airport, New York (2022); Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2022); Tate Liverpool (2020); Minneapolis Institute of Art (2017–2018)

Nisenbaum’s work is held in the permanent collections of museums and public institutions worldwide including Aïshti Foundation, Beirut⁠; Allentown Art Museum; Arts Council, Dublin; Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara; The Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Des Moines Art Center; The FLAG Art Foundation, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; KRC Collection, Voorschoten, Netherlands; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum Sander Darmstadt; Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery; The Perimeter, London; Queens Museum; Tate, UK; Toledo Museum of Art; University of Chicago Booth School of Business Art Collection; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Nisenbaum is the recipient of a Creative Capital Award (2024); and has been a Gala Honoree of the Hirshhorn Museum (2021) and The Phillips Collection (2019). She is a Tate Americas foundation honoree (2019), the recipient of a Provost’s Junior Faculty Diversity Development Award from Columbia University (2017), a Fellowship for Immigrant Women Leaders and Women’s Cabinet from the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (2015), and a Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant (2013).