Street/installation artist, Swoon, is admired worldwide. She has major works in MoMA, PS1, Tate Modern and at galleries such as Deitch Projects (NYC) and Gallerie L.J (Paris). Her larger than life woodblock prints and cut paper portraits can also be found on walls in various states of beautiful decay in cities around the world.
Her recent projects designing, building, and organizing fleets of rafts and most recently the “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea”, a large-scale installation at Deitch Projects in New York City received broad attention, including a photo spread on the front page of the NY Times Arts section. Built with materials salvaged from demolished buildings in the New York City area, and powered by bio-fuel converted motors, Swoon’s boats are monuments to the dense urban ecologies that grow spontaneously from the needs of a culture responding to the constraints of its geography and the pressures of its time.
“I just wanted to bring something absurdly joyful”
- Swoon about the Swimming Cities
This year, Swoon’s plans are much, much bolder - her new floating installation “Swimming Cities of Serinissima” involves connected rafts that will sail the Adriatic Sea from Slovenia towards Venice in time for the Venice Biennale. These three sculptural rafts will bring music, performance, and a cabinet of wonders to Venice that will have been collected on the journey.
Continue reading to learn how you can own a piece by this iconic artist and how you can help Swoon make a future project a reality… Read the full story
The subject of the video above is of a massive instillation entitled Portrait of Sylvia Elena by the incredible street artist SWOON and fellow artist Tennessee Jane Watson. Both women visited Juarez Mexico, the site of the infamous Juarez Femicide. Since 1993, about 400 women have been killed, all were young, most were raped. There are still more women that have been abducted or are missing. These crimes have never been solved and continue to this day.
The subject of this piece is Sylvia Elena, a 17 year old girl who was one of the first Juarez women to be killed.
[The pair] lead gallery patrons to subterranean levels of mourning. The ground floor of the show depicts murder victim Sylvia Elena, presiding over her own vigil and missing-person posters, as a sort of patron saint to the hundreds of women who have been abducted and killed in Juarez, Mexico, over the last decade. Below, a crack in the gallery floor reveals a pathway to a dusty and jagged exhibit that echoes with a recording of Sylvia’s mother, Ramona, recounting the tale of her daughter’s abduction. The candle-lit crawlspace illuminates Swoon’s tender wheatpaste mural of Sylvia — adorned with butterflies and covered in dust. [Regina Bresler, Flavorpill]
I wrote about this book dropping a few weeks back - finally got my copy and damn, this is a great book. It’s full of amazingly talented and creative ladies and a must have. Toofly sent along some photos from the Graffiti Women Panel Discussion that took place at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The panel included Lady Pink, TooFly, Swoon, and Lady K Fever.
