SWOON: SEVEN CONTEMPLATIONS AT CONTAINER

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Santa Fe, NM 87505,

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©2022

Design:

SWOON: SEVEN CONTEMPLATIONS AT CONTAINER Selections from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

We could not hope for a more appropriate exhibition than Seven Contemplations by Caledonia Curry, a.k.a. Swoon, to christen our new venue, CONTAINER. This exhibition originated at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY and represents the kind of museum programming we are bringing to CONTAINER. These magnificent sculptures address the universal nature of life: from birth, learning, and death, to healing and new beginnings. Each piece is a world unto itself, monumental art objects inviting the viewer on a pilgrimage into the nature of human experience, inevitability of loss, and how suffering can be our greatest teacher.

Curry’s interest in the inner journey is a personal one. There was no shortage of uncertainty growing up in a home where addiction and substance abuse disorder affected both her parents. Her father was able to find recovery, but her mother never did. These beginnings set her on a path to self-healing through meditative and contemplative practices. While the conceptual underpinnings of her work is specific to her circumstances, Swoon’s compositions embody her own enigmatic iconography. She allows audiences to bring an abundant dose of themselves and their expe riences to the interpretation. Curry uses her art practice to create transformative spaces in which people have the chance to connect with their inner worlds, and, hopefully, with empathy and a shared humanity.

The installations come with gentle directives and suggestions for how a viewer can slow down and contemplate a specific work. Each piece has a place within it for the viewer to set a fixed, meditative gaze asking to enter the present moment. Thalassa, as the primordial self, asks us “who were you before you were born?” Dawn and Gemma as birth request that we “hold the spark of new beginnings in your awareness.”

Curry draws meaning and healing from Buddhist practices, and was on a weeks-long silent meditation in Sri Lanka when the global pandemic turned the world on its head. Much like Buddhist philosophy, Seven Contemplations brings death and suffering to the front of the mind, not in condemnation, but as inevitable, wise teachers.

Medea represents fear and suffering. The piece takes its title from the vengeful, infanticidal Medea from the Greek epic Jason and the Golden Fleece. The seeds of this piece come from the young Curry’s very real fears that her mother might harm her or her siblings. Curry says, “The piece that I’m most proud of right now is this piece called the Medea. It did something that no work of art that I’ve ever made has ever done. I was able to start with a psychological state that I myself was in, which was kind of like a cognitive, dissociative, fragmented place that was related to memory and childhood trauma and all kinds of things. And then I was able to—through the creation of the piece to make physical the process of fragmentation of the mind—to braid it back together and to bring it back into cohesion.”

These works are winding, complex, detailed, and unexpected, much like the journey of healing from trauma. And much like the process of healing trauma, Seven Contemplations are best experienced in community. Curry’s work can bring people together for singular art adventures. We hope that these installations set the tone for CONTAINER and become a place where we can gather together to share art and the best things art brings: honesty, healing, curiosity, and transformation.

DAWN AND GEMMA

TEMPLE, 2014

The installation Dawn and Gemma features a portrait of a mother cradling a child. The near by installation showing a woman and child embraced by a skeleton is based on Swoon’s memories of her mother at the end of her life, and is titled Memento Mori. This Latin phrase means “remember you must die,” and has been used throughout Western art history to refer to artworks featuring symbolic visual reminders of the inevitability of death. Taken together, Dawn and Gemma and Memento Mori create a space for contemplating birth and death.

Provenance

Albright - Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Swoon: Seven Contemplations

September 26, 2020 – January 10, 2021

“Dawn and Gemma is a celebration of motherhood and connection. At a time when I was confronting hardship within my relation ship to my own mother, dealing with loss while comprehending the ways that I had not been mothered, I had a surprise encounter with a long lost friend who was 8 months pregnant. As Dawn and I reconnected and I witnessed the way she mothered her two other children, it was like a revelation about the existence of true nurturing. On this particular day, we sat and talked while she breastfed her new baby, and I felt totally awestruck at the beauty and tender ness of the moment. As I drew this piece, I was able to contemplate the presence of a deeply loving, generative force in all of us. I was able to draw myself nearer to the ways that mothering is present in the world, and that drawing myself nearer was like a balm to my soul. I felt that I was celebrating her in particular, an old and dear friend since childhood, while celebrating the elemental mothering force that runs through the world, and, celebrating everyone who chooses to nurture and love another.” - Caledonia Curry

MEDEA, 2017

Medea refers to a character in the ancient Greek myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece.

Numerous authors have told this tale with different endings and details. In one version, Medea falls in love with Jason and agrees to help him in his quest, turning away from her family based on the promise that Jason will marry her and take her away with him. Later, he abandons Medea for the daughter of a king, and in despair and rage Medea takes revenge by murdering their children. Swoon created this installation in response to childhood fears that her mother might harm her. The contemplation for this work focuses on fear and suffering.

Provenance

Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, OH

The Canyon: 1999 - 2017

September 22, 2017 – February 25, 2018

Mori Museum, Tokyo, Japan Catastrophe and the Power of Art

October 6, 2018 – Januauary 20, 2019

Albright - Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Swoon: Seven Contemplations

September 26, 2020 – January 10, 2021

“The Medea relates to the theme of Catastro phe and the Power of Art in a unique way. The core theme of the piece is the effect of catastro phe on the psyche. Catastrophic events often having a splitting effect on the individual psyche. There is subsequent disassociation and other coping mechanisms that our minds employ to try to protect us from the shock of a terrifying event, but these coping strategies can be mal adaptive if they become a permanent feature of our minds. The Medea takes on the challenge of personal trauma, addiction, abuse within the family, and the subsequent disassociation and splitting within the psyche, and uses the process of art-making to work backwards from splitting to coherence.

The sculptural installation contains representa tions of the family, the home, and the subcon scious mind, and weaves these together with audio tracks to build the narrative about the process of healing from and making sense of individual and familial trauma.”- Caledonia Curry

THALASSA, 2014

“This piece is called Thalassa. It’s named for a Greek primordial incarnation of the sea. As I drew this piece I was thinking about humanity’s relationship to the sea, and also my own relationship to water because I was at that moment in a state of grief and shock over the BP oil spill that had happened in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 near my home state of Florida. So much life was lost and there was such a feeling of helplessness. Eventually I found that the thing I wanted to draw was the place inside each of us where the sea is our mother. In some ways I feel the freest when I’m in water. That spirit is really alive inside this portrait as well. The model of this portrait is my dear friend the poet Naima Penniman and the hand carved block from which it was printed is almost 15 feet high—the biggest block print I’d ever made and it took hundreds of hours to carve. I’d say, whoever you are, Thalassa is the part of you that knows deep down that what you really are, is the crest of a wave which is also inseparable from the infinite sea.” - Caledonia Curry

Provenance

New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA Thalassa (The Great Hall Project)

July 8 – September 25, 2011

Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, Detroit, MI Thalassa

September 24 – June 25, 2016

Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, OH The Canyon: 1999 - 2017 September 22, 2017 – February 25, 2018

Center for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA The Heart Lives through the Hands April 25 – August 21, 2020

Albright - Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY Swoon: Seven Contemplations

September 26, 2020 – January 10, 2021

COSMOS, 2020

Cosmos, like its celestial namesake, is an evolving and expanding constellation of three-dimensional collages. Taken together, these works explore forces, experiences, and realities that are beyond our ability to grasp easily. This work focuses on feelings of awe, and of being filled with wonder and reverence.

EIDOPHONE SERIES, 2022

While installed as a cohesive experience—complete with custom-made wallpaper—each Eidophone piece is its own unique work of art. The installation consists of many small and mid-sized, salvaged objects. While some of these objects could be found in an artist’s studio, such as the paintbrush and squeegee, others, with their intricately carved wooden details, would be at home in a Victorian mansion. Delicate and complex cut paper is affixed to each object, bringing together Curry’s distinctive woodcut and mandala-like aesthetics with her early artistic practice as a street artist, affixing as she did, her work to bricks, doors, and the built environment of New York City.

These cut paper forms are inspired by the patterns and symmetries of the natural world. Not only the naturally occurring ones such as those found in protozoa and ice crystals, but also the visual patterns formed when humans find ways of capturing invisible natural forces. Curry’s cut paper echoes the compositions produced by harmonographs and Chladni plates. Both inventions were designed to record movements and vibrations, translating that data into geometric patterns, much like those found within the Eidophone Series.

The namesake of the series, however, has its own intriguing history. Margaret Watts Hughes (1842 – 1907) was a famous Welsh singer, philanthropist, and inventor who created the “eidophone.” The apparatus was based heavily on Alexander Graham Bell’s Photophone and its original intent was to measure the power of her own voice. One day, while experimenting with her invention, she discovered that when she sang to seeds placed upon a rubber membrane, rather than falling off the edge they danced into perfect geometric figures. What began as a way for Hughes to measure her vocal prowess became an exploration of visual forms creating beautiful shapes and patterns.

Thus Curry’s Eidophone Series carries aesthetic and historical feelings from another time when the wonder of the beauty and phenomenon of the natural world was all around us, and humans created fantastical inventions to try to understand it.

Provenance

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 2022

Kamayura,

paper

Alixa and Naima, 2017, block print on mylar with coffee stain and acrylic gouache, 101 x 73"

Memento Mori, 2017, silkscreen and acrylic gouache on handmade paper (made by artist),

x

Dawn and Gemma, 2019, silkscreen and acrylic gouache on paper and wooden painters panel, 48 x 48 x 2"

Bethlehem Boys, 2016, installation box: wood, silkscreen and hand painted acrylics on paper mounted to wood, mixed media collage (paper and wood) plexi glass face, 49 x 48.5"

Diogenes

Construction Worker

silkscreen and acrylic gouache on paper pasted to found object,

block print, hand painting and mixed media,

The

silkscreen, acrylic gouache and mixed media on handmade paper (made by artist),

Meena, 2018, hand cut paper on handmade cotton rag (paper made by artist), 28.5 x 24.5" framed

from

(Bangkok),

handmade paper (made by artist), 29 x 24.75" framed

(made by artist),

x

framed approx.

Huajuapan de Leon #21, 2019, silkscreen on chip board with acrylic gouache and ink, 12 x 8" Walkie, 2015, linoleum block print on mylar with coffee stain and hand painted acrylic gouache, 70 x 42"

37

Edline, 2016, block print, coffee stain, gouache on mylar, 40 x 102"

TEMPLES 3 AND 4 FROM SWIMMING CITIES OF SERENISSIMA

Temples 3 and 4 from Swimming Cities of Serenissima were part of a fleet of sculptural junk rafts that “crashed” the 2009 Venice Biennale. The project was the last in a series of river-based projects founded and led by Swoon.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page 14

1 Eidophone 78, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 10 x 10 x 1"

2 The Unstruck, wood, silkscreen, acrylic gouache, 44 x 44 x 2"

Page 15

1 Cicada Wheel, wood, acrylic gouache, silkscreen, paper, 30 x 30 x 2"

2 Eidophone 110, cut paper and hand painting on panel, 5.5 x 8 x 7.5"

3 Eidophone 87, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 7 x 5.5 x 0.75"

4 Eidophone 81, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 28.5 x 8.5 x 1"

5 Blue Star Panel, wood, spray paint, hand cut paper and silkscreen on paper 44 x 44 x 2"

Page 16

1 Eidophone 7, cut paper and hand painting on wooden panel, 33 x 11.75 x 2.75" framed 27 x 6 x 1.5" unframed

2 Eidophone 94, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 6.75 x 3.5 x 0.75"

3 Eidophone 102, cut paper on found object, 7.25 x 7.25 x 2.25"

4 Eidophone 38, cut paper on found object, 6 x 13 x 1"

5 Eidophone 39, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 18 x 16.5 x 1.25"

6 Eidophone 105, cut paper and hand painting on wood, 17.5 x 6 x 0.25"

7 Eidophone 106, cut paper and hand painting on wood, 6 x 5.5 x 1"

8 Eidophone 103, cut paper and hand painting on wood, 5.5 x 14.75 x 0.75"

Page 19

1 Eidophone 101, cut paper on found object, 10 x 2 x 2"

2 Eidophone 85, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 10 x 2 x 2"

3 Eidophone 84, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 11.5 x 8 x 1.5"

4 Eidophone 80, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 11.75 x 33 x 4"

5 Eidophone 107, cut paper on found object, 7.75 x 4 x 1"

6 Eidophone 113, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 11.75 x 33 x 4"

7 Eidophone 93, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 7.25 x 7.25 x 2.25"

Page 20

1 Eidophone 86, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 9.5 x 9.5 x 0.5”

2 Eidophone 75, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 24 x 19 x 0.5"

3 Eidophone 96, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 12 x 12 x 0.25"

4 Eidophone 91, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 19.5 x 19.5 x 0.25"

5 Eidophone 111, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 24 x 18.75 x 0.25"

6 Eidophone 60, papercut, collaged paper, and hand panting on board, 24.5 x 5.75 x 1"

7 Eidophone 97, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 11 x 9.25 x 1.5"

Page 21

1 Eidophone 83, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 20.25 x 13 x 0.5"

2 Eidophone 73, cut paper and hand painting on panel, 23.5 x 12 x 1" framed 30.25 x 18.75 x 2.75" unframed

3 Eidophone 77, cut paper and hand painting on wooden panel, 14 x 7.5 x 0.75"

4 Eidophone 104, cut paper and hand painting on wood, 6 x 5.5 x 1"

5 Eidophone 34, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 8.5 x 17.25 x 2.75"

6 Eidophone 109, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 14 x 10 x 2"

7 Eidophone 63, papercut and hand painting on wood, 31 x 14.5 x 1"

Page 42

1 986_Dad_charcol, mixed media on paper, 13 x 9.5"

2 TSR Drawing 51, mixed media on paper, 16.3 x 13"

3 TSR Drawing 91, mixed media on paper, 13 x 16.3"

4 994_Pastel_purple_girl_on_blue, mixed media on paper, 24 x 19"

5 TSR Drawing 49, mixed media on paper, 13 x 9.6"

6 981_Blue_brown_glasses_man, mixed media on paper, 12 x 12"

8 Eidophone 88, cut paper and hand painting on wallpaper and panel, 5.5 x 7 x 0.75"

9 Eidophone 116, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 45.75 x 15 x 0.75"

10 Eidophone 115, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 43 x 12 x 1"

11 Eidophone 79, cut paper and hand painting on found object, 4 x 5 x 0.5"

ABOUT SWOON

Caledonia Curry, known to the art world 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 ex ploring the depths of human complexity by mobilizing her artwork to fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in toward 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 the conceptual limits of the genre and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists.

Her recent work has been focused on the relationship of trauma and addiction. Through community partnerships that center compassion and the transformative power of art, Curry draws on her personal history growing up in an opioid addicted family as a catalyst for connection and healing.

Over the past 10 years, she has founded and developed collaborative multi-year projects that address crises ranging from natural disasters to the opioid epidemic in Braddock and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Komye, Haiti.

She is currently developing a full length narrative movie which will bring together drawing, immersive installation, stop motion animation and her collaborative work, with the traditions of storytelling through film.

MUSEUM AND NOTABLE COLLECTIONS

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY

Tate Modern, London, UK

Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, Portland, OR

Tudor Investments Collection, Boston, MA

Fidelity Investments Collection, Boston, MA

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN MoMA PS1 (permanent site specific installation), New York, NY NoVo Foundation Collection, New York, NY Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

2020 The Jaunt Artist-in-Residence, Nilwella, Sri-Lanka

2019 Finalist - Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC Tandem Press Printmaking Residency, Madison, WI

2018 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, Captiva, FL

2016 Tandem Press Printmaking Residency, Madison, WI

2014 Present Project International Artist Residency, Kaka’ako, Honolulu, HI

2011 SGC International Community Engagement Award, School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University, St. Louis, MO

2010 The Creative Time Global Residency, Bigones, Haiti Boomerang Grant Creative Time Grant

2009 Town House Gallery Residency, Cairo, Egypt

2007 Tides Foundation Lambent Fellowship, New York, NY

2002 Evolutionaere-Zellen Grant, NGBK, Berlin, Germany