2024 · Residency 63
Diana Shpungin
Visual Artist
Artist Statement
Diana Shpungin's work is dedicated to challenging ideas of drawing through sculptural and time-based forms. Her works are led by a heart-strong conceptualism, involving obsessive processes while exploring themes of memory, failure, loss, and repair, –employing optimism in a quest for empathy across identity lines. The use of graphite pencil is often the foundation of the work.
Bio
Born in Riga, Latvia, Shpungin emigrated as a child to New York City. She received her MFA from The School of Visual Arts, NY and has exhibited extensively in both national and international venues including: The Bronx Museum; The Brooklyn Museum; Invisible Exports; Sculpture Center, NY; Smack Mellon, NY; The Aldrich Museum, CT; The Bass Museum, Miami; MASS MoCA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson; SiTE:LAB; Futura Center, Prague; Galerie Zurcher, Paris; and Tomio Koyama, Tokyo. Shpungin was awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, the NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture and multiple grants from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In addition she has been awarded residencies from Art Omi, BAU at The Camargo Foundation, Bronx Museum AIM, MacDowell, and Yaddo among others. Shpungin's work has been reviewed in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, The New York Times among many other publications. Shpungin has been an Assistant Professor at Parsons: The New School for Design for over a decade.