Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 6

Born 1979 in New York, NY
Lives in Los Angeles, CA

With her raw, cartoonish paintings and drawings, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer offers wry, sensitive commentary on the times in which we live. Although unsentimental in her portrayal of the human condition, she renders her subjects with directness and sympathy. Whether depicting Donald Trump supporters at a political rally, well-heeled partygoers mingling at a swanky art-filled home, or teenagers in an alley in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, each socially charged scene seems to capture some element of shared humanity. In the largest work on view in the Biennial, the oil painting Veterans Day, she looks at figures who—from her antiviolent, antinationalist perspective—engaged in acts of meaningful resistance. These include the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the international volunteers who fought against the forces of Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War; Cassius Clay (or Muhammad Ali, as he was later known); and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.