Swoon

(American, born 1977)

Swoon is a contemporary American street artist best known for her large-scale wheatpaste prints and paper cutouts. Often depicting portraits of her friends and family, her work involves a wide-ranging practice that includes installation and performance. Using reclaimed materials whenever possible, Swoon’s images are often printed on recycled newspaper and glued onto abandoned buildings, bridges, and street signs around the world. “There is power on the walls of the city, and I fell in love with every part of that,” said the artist. Born Caledonia Dance Curry in 1978 in New London, CT, Swoon moved to New York and received her BA in fine arts at the Pratt Institute in 2002. Her work gained recognition after a solo show at Jeffrey Deitch’s Soho gallery in 2005, quickly attracting the attention of gallerists and museum curators. The artist’s site-specific solo show Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014 was the museum’s first exhibition dedicated to a living street artist. Swoon currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.