Swoon is a Brooklyn based street artist who uses paste-ups or wheaties for street art exhibits. Caledonia Dance Curry, (aka Swoon) was born in 1978 in New London, Connecticut and raised in Daytona Beach, Florida. She studied painting at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn and began her street art ca. 1999; culminating with large-scale installations by 2005. Swoon regularly pastes works depicting people, often her friends and family, on the streets around the world. Her work is inspired by both art, historical and folk sources, ranging from German Expressionist wood block prints to Indonesian shadow puppets.
To add to her “bow”, Swoon backs NYC groups such as Grub, which provides free Dumpster-diving dinners in Brooklyn; and founded the Toyshop collective known for their “happenings“. One of these included the march through the Lower East Side, which comprised around 50 people playing instruments made out of junk.
So how did she make the transition from Caledonia to Swoon? According to Wikipedia: It was a former boyfriend who had a dream about the two of them doing graffiti and running from the police that she got the name “Swoon”. In his dream, she was writing “Swoon” on the walls of buildings. Thinking that it was pretty, Curry started tagging her art with the “Swoon” name. Accolades:
- At the New Orleans Museum of Art, Swoon created a site-specific installation depicting the sea goddess Thalassa (2011);
- Swoon 2011 at Metro Gallery, Armadale Feb 14- March 6, 2011.
- Her 1st solo exhibition was at the Black Rat Projects Gallery (London) which included sculptures and paper cut-outs (December, 2011).
- Submerged Motherlands Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, (2014).
For further information check out:
- Swoon
- Facebook:, or
- Hookedblog
Major Swoon = Major Rapture!
Website | About | Facebook | Twitter
“Is It Art?”