Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Artist Who Confronted Injustice, Dies at 46
Painter Celeste Dupuy-Spencer died at age 46 on Friday, April 10, at her home in Los Angeles, days before a planned solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch’s West Hollywood gallery; no cause of death was publicly reported. Deitch announced the news on Saturday and said the gallery would share details about the exhibition and a memorial in the coming days. Dupuy-Spencer’s painting “Father, Don’t You See That I Am Burning” (2021), depicting the January 6 insurrection, was acquired by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, in 2022. Born in 1979 and raised in Rhinebeck, New York, she studied at Bard College in 2007 without graduating, lived in New Orleans after moving there in 2012, and later settled in Los Angeles; her work appeared in the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the Hammer Museum’s 2018 Made in L.A. biennial. The article also notes her public advocacy for Palestinian human rights and that she faced sustained online harassment for criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
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This story was covered in Biennales in Flux, Institutions Under Pressure