Faculty

Profile

Diana Shpungin is a Latvian-born American multi-disciplinary artist who has been exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions in both national and international venues, including: Bronx Museum of Art, Bronx, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Children’s Museum of Art, New York, NY; Invisible Exports, New York, NY; Marc Straus Gallery, New York, NY; New Discretions, New York, NY; Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL; Franconia Sculpture Park, Minneapolis, MN; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ; SiTE:LAB, Grand Rapids, MI; Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France; Fieldgate Gallery, London, England; Futura Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic; Galerie Zurcher, Paris, France; and Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, in addition to being included in numerous public and private collections in the United States and abroad.

Shpungin’s work has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Art Papers, Bloomberg, The Boston Globe, The Brooklyn Rail, Connaissance des Arts, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, Le Monde, New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Miami Herald, Time Out London, Time Out New York, Sculpture Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, and Zing Magazine among others. Her work was the subject of PBS’s Art Assignment, Object Empathy and was cited in the introduction of Jerry Saltz’s book Seeing Out Louder. A hardcover book was published in 2016 documenting Shpungin’s monumental project, Drawing Of A House (Triptych), with essays by Paul Amenta and Caryn Coleman, an exhibition catalog supporting Shpungin’s solo exhibition Bright Light/Darkest Shadow, a decade of hand-drawn animation at MOCA Tucson, was published in 2021 with essays by Lisa D. Freiman, Richard Klein, Matthea Harvey and Ginger Shulick-Porcella, and most recently in 2022 a publication documenting Shpungin’s monumental solo exhibition, Always Begin At The End at Smack Mellon with contributions by Gabriel de Guzman, Darla Migan, and Rachel Vera Steinberg.

Born in Latvia’s seaside capital of Riga under Soviet rule, Shpungin emigrated as a child to the United States. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and has been a part-time Assistant Professor at Parsons: The New School for Design in New York City for over a decade.

Recent Publications

New York Magazine

Artforum

Flash Art

Art in America

Art Papers

The Village Voice

The New York Times

Timeout New York

Zing Magazine

Bloomberg

Timeout London

Sculpture Magazine

Awards And Honors

Shpungin was awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2019/2020), the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture (2017), and several grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2015, 2020, 2022). She is also the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Art Omi, Bau Institute at Camargo Foundation, Bronx Museum AIM Program, CEC Artslink, Dieu Donne, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell Residency, Montello Foundation and Yaddo.