Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, acclaimed for her powerful depictions of resistance against injustice both domestically and internationally, passed away on Friday, April 10, at 46, at her residence in Los Angeles. Her death occurred just days before the launch of her new solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch’s West Hollywood gallery. The cause of death has not been disclosed, and the gallery is anticipated to release a statement about her exhibition and a memorial soon.
Deitch’s gallery shared the news of her passing on Saturday, describing Dupuy-Spencer as “beloved by people in her creative community.”
In an email to Hyperallergic, Deitch praised her, stating, “Celeste was an extraordinary artist and a wonderful person, deeply dedicated to her painting, often working round the clock in her studio. We spent many hours in her studio talking about the history of art and how it intersects with world events.”
The artist, based in California, explored violent themes in contemporary American politics through her art. Her poignant portrayal of the January 6 insurrection, “Father, Don’t You See That I Am Burning” (2021), was purchased by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, in 2022.
Dupuy-Spencer was also vocal about her opposition to actions taken by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Despite facing persistent online harassment from pro-Israel factions, she remained steadfast in advocating for Palestinian human rights.
In September, she expressed on Instagram, “I’m proud to be included on the list of people who stopped everything to cry out for an end to the genocide and a free Palestine. I don’t care what they do to me. Why would I duck and hide from fascists?”
She also stated, “To call a Jewish person a token for speaking against the state — that is anti-Semitism.”
Born in 1979, Dupuy-Spencer was raised in Rheinbeck, New York, and often traveled to Louisiana. She pursued a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts at Bard College in 2007 but did not graduate. In 2012, she relocated from New York to New Orleans, eventually establishing herself in Los Angeles, exhibiting at Nino Mier Gallery and Eve Fowler’s Artist Curated Projects.
Her work gained recognition a decade after college, with her paintings featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the Hammer Museum’s 2018 Made in LA biennial. While in New Orleans, she considered abandoning her art career, but the cultural experience of the Deep South motivated her to investigate the roots of American mythologies.
She explained to Pelican Bomb’s Hyunjee Nicole Kim, “Our relationship to that stuff is so twisted…It’s…desperately trying to be like, ‘that has nothing to do with me’ — when in fact it has everything to do with you,” after declining to attend a family wedding at a historic plantation.
In 2021, after watching Democracy Now! and CNN reports of MAGA activists storming the US Capitol during the certification of the 2020 election, Dupuy-Spencer was inspired to depict the scene, despite initial resistance. She portrayed the tumultuous events involving QAnoners, Proud Boys, and others, drawing inspiration from Caravaggio, Thomas Cole, James Ensor’s “Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889” (1888), and Tintoretto’s “Moses Drawing Water from the Rock” (1577).
As her profile grew, Dupuy-Spencer began discussing her identity as a trans, masculine-presenting individual, while not fully identifying as male or female. Although she preferred not to use specific pronouns, she used she/her in interviews.
In a 2021 profile with Los Angeles Magazine, she explained, “I don’t consider myself transitioning to male, but I was starting to do that and found myself reacquainted with something that I really love in myself — the feminine side that was in a constant state of suppression. Being trans allowed me to understand what femininity really was.”
Her upcoming solo exhibition at Deitch, Burning in the Eyes of the Maker, delved into the tension between the commercial aspects of the art world and the political messages in her pieces. In her artist statement for the show, Dupuy-Spencer described her approach to her new paintings as a “conversation rather than a construction,” noting that creating art allowed her to access emotions and ideas that were otherwise out of reach.
“Painting, for me, is participation in the aliveness of life,” she wrote. “It is communication as recognition, not explanation. Meaning emerges only through encounter — when a viewer and a painting agree to stand in the same place and face the same uncertainty. The task is contact.”
Nina MacLaughlin, who co-authored a book with Dupuy-Spencer about her paintings, set to be released by Phaidon’s Monacelli Press this summer, expressed her deep sorrow at Dupuy-Spencer’s passing, calling it “a massive sadness” and describing working with her as “one of the great honors of my life.”
MacLaughlin told Hyperallergic, “Celeste saw beyond. She saw through and she saw beyond and she saw what was right here and she showed us. She showed what most of us try to ignore, deny, scroll past. She looked for us. There was deep tenderness in her rage. No one had a mind like hers. No one. No one. She burned at a different temperature.”
