Artist of the Week: Swoon

by pmaxwell, 27 June 2008

Seen in New York City

Swoon is a Brooklyn-based street artist who creates life-sized portraits of people she meets, using woodcut block prints and paper cutouts. Swoon's galleries are city walls, often in the environments that inspired the prints. A devout collaborator, she founded the Toyshop Collective, and inspired the Miss Rockaway Armada, a fleet of junk rafts on the Mississippi River piloted by artists and performers. Swoon recently had her first Los Angeles solo exhibition, "Drown Your Boats" at New Image Art. Additionally, she is currently part of the public exhibition titled, "The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics", at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and "In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor" at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach.

Scribe Media, Alexandra Lerman

Currently an installation by Swoon called, "Portrait of Silvia Elena", is showing at Honey Space, a Chelsea Gallery founded by artist Thomas Beale. The installation is a memorial to 17-year-old Silvia Elena Rivera Morales who was killed in 1995 and was among the first victims of unsolved femicides that have been occurring in Juarez, Mexico for over ten years. The installation which includes a shrine below ground, audio effects, and Swoon's signature cutouts, is a collaborative project by Swoon and social activist Tennessee Jane Watson.

Seen in Berlin

Over the past four years Swoon's work has appeared in the U.S., France, England, Mexico and Iraq. She has also shown at Art Basel Miami Beach, a 2005 solo exhibition at Deitch Projects, PS1's Contemporary Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. Swoon is currently represented by Deitch Projects.