Who is Zoe Kestan? Lingerie entrepreneur helped Hunter Biden's foray into art
Hunter Biden reportedly has several connections in the New York art scene, mostly through lingerie entrepreneur Zoe Kestan, who calls herself @weed_slut_420 on Instagram. This has led President Joe Biden's 51-year-old son to now make a foray into the world of art with Soho art dealer Georges Bergès, who, according to Breitbart News, has some ties to China.
Bergès is reportedly holding a private viewing for Biden's artwork in Los Angeles, followed by an art exhibition in New York in the fall. Despite being surrounded by controversy, Biden has reportedly been invested in his art full time. Bergès told Artnet that his pieces will “range from $75,000 for works on paper to $500,000 for large-scale paintings.”
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Artnet reported last year how Hunter's entry into the art world appears to be through Zoe Kestan, “the lingerie entrepreneur who is better known by her Instagram handle @weed_slut_420."
Who is Zoe Kestan?
The younger Biden was often spotted in 2018 stopping by at art openings and parties on the Lower East Side. Sources told Artnet that many of his art connections came through his relationship with Kestan, who has nearly 70,000 followers on Instagram.
Aside from modeling her wares on the platform, Kestan is also an artist whose Polaroid shots have featured in group shows with Bernadette Van-Huy, Danny McDonald, and Sam Pulitzer. Furthermore, she has also appeared on the controversial podcast Red Scare hosted by art critic Anna Khachiyan and actress Dasha Nekrasova. Kestan has also walked the ramp during London Fashion Week.
"There’s also some concrete leftover evidence of Hunter’s brief wade into the water of downtown art studios and gallery openings," Artnet reported last year. Sources told the outlet that "being circulated around the downtown gallery hub of Dimes Square like samizdat, are images of oil paintings of Hunter Biden — that is, images of paintings of all of Biden with nothing left to the imagination — made by another local artist who has asked dealers to not reveal her identity."
That said, Hunter's new venture has sparked concerns about the potential for pay-for-play corruption, considering the buyers will remain anonymous and the art world is a known avenue for money laundering, according to Breitbart News. The outlet cited a bipartisan report by the US Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last year, which found that “secrecy, anonymity, and a lack of regulation create an environment ripe for laundering money and evading sanctions” in the art world.
“Given the intrinsic secrecy of the art industry, it is clear that change is needed in this multi-billion dollar industry,” the report concluded. Hunter Biden's past overseas dealings with Ukraine and China during his father's vice-presidential tenure only "furthers these concerns," per Profiles in Corruption author Peter Schweizer.
“Hunter Biden was repeatedly hired and given deals by foreign entities that he was clearly not qualified for in the hopes of getting favors from his father,” Schweizer, president of Government Accountability Institute (GAI), told Breitbart News. “It is not a stretch to believe that foreign entities will pay for or commission his works of art at inflated prices to do the same.”
"As with every artist, sales are always confidential to protect the privacy of the collector,” the Townsend Group, an agency representing Bergès, told Fox Business in a statement. "Pricing fine art in his experiences as a Gallerist is based on the demand of the work as well and the intrinsic value of it. [Bergès'] feeling is that within each piece – as with every artist, sales are always confidential to protect the privacy of the collector, this is standard practice for transactions in galleries as well as auction houses.”
Some suspect that Hunter's art could be sold at inflated prices simply because of his name. “Anybody who buys it would be guaranteed instant profit," Alex Acevedo, who owns the Alexander Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, told the New York Post. “He’s the president’s son. Everybody would want a piece of that. The provenance is impeccable,” he added, saying Hunter’s pieces could sell in the $25,000 to $100,000 range.