Life of Wonderment

Swoon Blurs the Line Between Art and Activism

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With a glowing paper cutout pinned over her heart, the artist known as Swoon led a procession through the Brooklyn Museum early one summer night to her installation “Submerged Motherlands,” a site-specific jumble that includes two cantilevered rafts, seemingly cobbled out of junk; a tree, of fabric and wire, that reaches to the rotunda; and nooks of stenciled portraits.

A sellout crowd was there for a film premiere and multimedia concert, documenting and inspired by Swoon’s travel on the rafts. As the audience sat spellbound, Swoon, her red curls bobbing, flitted around, snapping photos, taking it all in.

“There’s that feeling that you get when you see something that you don’t understand the origin of: wonderment,” she said. “It brings about a kind of innocence, and I love that. I love to witness it. I love to be a part of making those moments happen.”

Since she began illegally pasting images around the city 15 years ago, Swoon has inspired a lot of wonderment. Born Caledonia Curry, she started her career as a street artist, but quickly leapfrogged to the attention of gallerists and museum curators, which let her expand to installation and performance art, often with an activist, progressive bent. Her intricate paper-cut portraits and cityscapes, often affixed to walls in hardscrabble places, are meant to disintegrate in place, a refrain to the life around them. Meanwhile, her socially minded work has focused on building cultural hubs for far-flung artistically welcoming communities.

The Brooklyn Museum has done solo shows for Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, but hers was the first devoted to a living street artist, let alone a woman who rooted her career in Brooklyn. Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz, newly minted Swoon collectors, came to the opening.

“When you look at the work of a lot of her peers, hers stands apart,” said Sarah Suzuki, an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, which bought several Swoon pieces for its permanent collection in 2005. “There is a real observational aspect to what she’s doing,” documenting her extensive travels and missions.

In New Orleans, Swoon helped create a shantytown where each house is a musical instrument. In Braddock, Pa., a dwindling postindustrial landscape, she worked on an arts center in an abandoned church. After the Haiti earthquake, she alighted, with a team of volunteers, to build colorful houses in the village of Cormiers.

Unlike other street artists, Swoon’s work isn’t based in “cynicism or a critique of commercial culture,” Ms. Suzuki said. “There’s an emotional core there.”

The last year has been a pivotal one for Swoon, personally and professionally. The Brooklyn Museum show, open through Aug. 24, is also a response to the death of her mother. Now 36, Swoon is grappling with her own choices — she pours most of her income back into her projects — while planning her next moves. Here, a glimpse into her artistic life.

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