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23 Tate exhibition for the NHS
Installation view of Aliza Nisenbaum at Tate Liverpool December 2020 © Gareth Jones
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Moving exhibition pays tribute to key workers
By ANNA MICHAELIDES
American artist Aliza Nisenbaum has created a collection of paintings showcasing key workers from Liverpool.
The exhibition consists of two large-scale watercolour paintings of a team from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and 17 smaller portraits of people who work for other hospitals in Merseyside. The paintings are colourful and vibrant with the intention of telling the stories of NHS staff during the pandemic.
The Tate invited Aliza to come to Liverpool for a residency to create the paintings in April 2020, but because of the pandemic she couldn’t travel from America. Instead, she worked remotely from her studio in LA.
Curator of the collection, Tamar Hemmes, discussed why the new works are so special to the Tate Liverpool.
She said: “Aliza forms a really close connection with the people who become the subjects of her paintings,”
“It was a really hands-on experience of creating these relationships between her and the people who work for the NHS, making sure that they were able to have dialogues and get to know each other so that she could paint their individuality.
“To be able to pick out these individual people and show that they are doing it despite the impact on themselves, I think is really amazing.”
The key workers played a part in what the work would look like by bringing objects that were important to them or suggesting what kind of pose they would like to sit in. The artist spoke to every single person via Zoom to get a sense of their personalities and experiences during the coronavirus pandemic.
Local photographer Dan Bently took portraits of all the people involved and photographed details of their NHS uniforms, which then became the paintings.
Part of the selection process was putting out an open call, initially for any key workers, but the vast response came from the NHS and Aliza selected the people who had the most important stories to tell or she felt she had the most connection with.
When looking at the collection, the Tamar sees ‘individual people and their experiences’ and explained that during this time it’s so easy to think of frontline workers as ‘just one big group’, easily forgetting that these are people with their own lives, fears, worries and concerns.
The project shows people who work in different roles within hospitals.
One image shows a hospital chaplain who has spoken about how she has been supporting patients and their families during this time. Another shows a professor of outbreak medicine who is part of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) who has been working on the research for a vaccine and for treatment. He presented struggles with being vilified because some people see these researchers as the those who are stopping their lives from running as normal and who are affecting the economy. Other images include porters, housekeepers and other different roles that represent the vast group of people who work for the NHS.
The collection can be seen at Tate Liverpool until September 2021 once the gallery reopens in April, in line with the roadmap for lifting lockdown restrictions.
