Caledonia Curry (b. 1977)Caledonia Curry exhibits under the name Swoon, is regarded as the first woman to gain wide recognition in the male-dominated world of street art. A Brooklyn-based artist known for her large-scale installations, wheat-pasted block prints, and cut paper assemblages, Curry has consistently created compelling portraits and earnest expressions of what it means to be human. Treating the beautiful as sublime, she explores feelings of sincerity, empathy, and healing as it relates to people, their communities, and their built environment. Her early interventions in the urban landscape took the form of wheat-pasting portraits to the wall of cities around the world, and her public practice has expanded to using art to rebuild communities and humanize today’s most pressing social and environmental issues. She founded the Heliotrope Foundation in 2015 in order to help communities respond to and heal after natural disasters and other urgent social crises. Community-based endeavors that Curry has led include the construction of a musical architecture in New Orleans, a neighborhood revitalization project in North Braddock, PA, and the Konbit Shelter in Haiti which responded to the devastation of the 2010 earthquake. Along with her place-based work, Curry has a studio practice that spans drawing, printmaking, architectural sculpture, and installations.Caledonia Curry trained in painting, drawing, and printmaking at the Pratt Institute in New York City. Her work has been collected and shown internationally at galleries and museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Detroit Institute of Art, and the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, among many others.