Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is known around the world for her groundbreaking public artwork. Swoon’s work is shown in Finland for the first time, as part of the Graphica Creative triennial exhibition.
Swoon (b.1977) began installing street art towards the end of the 1990’s while she was studying in New York. She drew and printed on recuperated, excess paper, pasting them on walls around the city. These delicate and intimate pieces depicting people the artist meet on the streets, attracted widespread attention. The now internationally renowned artist’s work includes installations, animations and community art projects.
For Swoon, art is a central tool for empowerment and creating social change. She has produced several projects with different communities in the United States and elsewhere around the world. In her work, the artist employs elements from her own life experience, and has dealt with subjects such as growing up as the child of opioid dependent parents. Educated as a printmaker, Swoon has also developed new approaches to printmaking.
The installation shown at the Jyväskylä Art Museum, shows large scale portraits, typical of her production, along with pieces from the Eidophones series and an animation film. The central piece of this installation is Cicada, Swoon’s first extensive stop motion animation. This piece is about birth, growth and change, and is based on the artist’s own biographical story. The main character of the story, the “Tarantula-mother” – is an allegory to the artist’s memory of childhood, and the mythological figures express processes of survival and spiritual growth.
