House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting

Figurative painting is once again flourishing in the twenty-first century, yet its meanings and functions are far from settled. As knowledge transforms, information accelerates, and societies splinter, this exhibition considers what painting is and can be in today’s world. In House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting, twenty-nine international artists, of whom twenty-five have created new works for this occasion, are brought together, signalling a return to allegorical painting in contemporary art.

The year is 3100 BCE and writing begins to develop in ancient Mesopotamia. At first, to count the grain for trading at the market, then to capture human life and imagination in myths, hymns, and parables, inscribed on clay tablets. The Sumerian goddess Nisaba presides over this epistemic revolution, when thousands of years of storytelling begin to take material form and knowledge itself starts to shift. In the centuries that follow, the scribes evoke her name before they write their stories. Nisaba. 

The year is 2026 and knowledge is changing once again. Information circulates at an unprecedented pace and narratives about ourselves, our communities, and the world at large are becoming increasingly unstable. In this moment, a new generation of painters emerges. The artists in House of Nisaba are not part of a movement but rather share a similar approach: they paint allegorically. 

In painting, allegory is a way of creating images or figures that express meaning beyond their literal appearance, for instance how a human skull in historical still-life painting symbolized the transience of human achievement in the face of mortality. In previous centuries, allegorical meaning in painting was widely legible. There was a shared iconography, through which visual meaning was produced and recognized. Today, a shared iconography has largely been replaced with individualized references. The artists in House of Nisaba compose new pictorial and symbolic languages that draw as much from art history, mythology and literature, as from fashion, cinema, news media, science fiction, astrology, and digital platforms like Instagram and TikTok where information is algorithmic. The feed starts to matter. Rather than offering stable narratives, these paintings propose worlds shaped by discontinuity, ambiguity, and multiplicity. 

House of Nisaba holds the work of twenty-nine international artists, who are committed to a conversation on allegory. Nearly twenty-five artists have created a new painting for the exhibition, presented alongside several major works on loan. The participating artists are, in alphabetical order: Soufiane Ababri, Michael Armitage, Felipe Baeza, Kevin Beasley, Cornel Brudaşcu, Leidy Churchman, Alex Červený, Nicole Eisenman, Hamishi Farah, Martin Gustavsson, Gordon Hookey, Sanya Kantarovsky, Melanie Kitti, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Jill Mulleady, Wangechi Mutu, Naudline Pierre, Mohammed Sami, Cinga Samson, Agnes Scherer, Selma Selman, Agata Słowak, Mikołaj Sobczak, Abdellah Taïa, Mounira Al Solh, Salman Toor, Kevin E. Quashie, and Evelyn T. Wang. For the chapter of the exhibition at Kunsthaus Zürich, additional artists will be invited. 

The exhibition architecture is designed by Formafantasma. The walls, made of MDF and cardboard, suggest this House of Nisaba as provisional and continually in the making, reflecting the new life of painting in the twenty-first century. The exhibition plays with the architectural history of allegorical painting in temples, churches, cathedrals, and mosques, by including aspects of sacred architecture, albeit radically decentralised. A large oval ring encircles the exhibition – an ambulatory of sorts that functions as both enclosure and frame, on the exterior of which a new text by Kevin E. Quashie on “Allegory” is hand-painted. His text reads: “Allegory. Here is a book, a word, a poem, a sign: let it consume you. […] Allegory operates through projection, through distance – one thing standing near or for another: a thrall of hermeneutics, an invitation to fall into. […] Here is the sign that will house you: lose and trust your way.”

Welcome to the House of Nisaba. 

House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting is curated by Hendrik Folkerts. The exhibition is co-organized by Moderna Museet and Kunsthaus Zürich. The first iteration at Moderna Museet is generously supported by The House of Nisaba Exhibition Circle, Pontus Bonnier, Mari and Thomas Eldered, Lars Förberg; DeBlasio Family Foundation; and Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art.