Tate art show on healthcare workers

LONDON－Mexican-born artist Aliza Nisenbaum has captured striking images of frontline medics in Liverpool as they fight COVID-19.

The commissioned works completed by the New York-based painter have gone on display at Tate Liverpool, an art gallery and museum in the city, and will be exhibited through June 27, though currently the gallery is closed due to the pandemic lockdown.

Nisenbaum, a painter known for her bright, large-scale portraits, captured the faces and stories of National Health Service staff in Liverpool, the first city in Britain to introduce mass testing for the virus. Her works center on the city's Alder Hey Children's Hospital, one of the biggest of its kind in Britain.

Staff members who sat for oil paintings or watercolors by the artist included doctors, hospital porters and student nurses.

Nisenbaum worked with these sitters remotely, painting from life via video chat, even though the pandemic has prevented her from traveling to Britain.

Selected through an open call, the people depicted in these new works represent a broad range of care workers, including doctors, nurses, porters, researchers and healthcare assistants.

Influenced by the Mexican mural movement and its depiction of social history, Nisenbaum creates colorful paintings that often focus on community groups.

"Nisenbaum has worked in response to the current global health crisis, focusing her attention on NHS staff from the Merseyside region whose work has proved vital during the COVID-19 pandemic," a spokesperson at the Tate says, adding that this exhibition features two newly commissioned group portraits and 11 individual watercolor paintings.

"Nisenbaum's new paintings capture the stories of front-line NHS workers and highlight the impact that COVID-19 has had on their work and home lives. They are shown alongside things that have given them support and hope through this difficult time, such as pets or musical instruments."

The exhibition was held as Britain suffered a sharp rise in infections and deaths in the new year, fueled partly by a new more highly contagious variant of the virus first identified in southeast England.

Xinhua