Caledonia Curry

Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a contemporary artist and filmmaker recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of public artwork. Through intimate portraits, immersive installations, and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20 years exploring the depths of human complexity, and asking how art can fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in towards a more just and equitable world. She is best known as one of the first women Street Artists to gain international recognition in a male-dominated field, pushing its conceptual limits and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists. As a classically trained printmaker, she has innovated new approaches to create large-scale relief prints and intricate papercut works. Her critical engagement with issues of social and environmental justice have positioned her at the forefront of the emergent discourse around socially-engaged art practices. Her commitment to expanding the possibilities of art to repair trauma and foster personal and collective healing continues to drive her substantial contributions to contemporary art through her work with portraiture, sculpture, installation and most recently, stop-motion animation. In 2015 she founded the Heliotrope Foundation to support multiple collaborative projects that use art to respond to crisis. Curry has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Tate Modern. Born in 1977, New London, Connecticut. Raised in Daytona Beach, Florida. Attended Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, 1998–2001. Lives and works in Brooklyn.