[2][3] She was part of a group of artists early 00s, including JR and Banksy, that were committed to pushing the forms and conceptual limits of the Street Art genre.

[5] Swoon has wheatpasted her intricate portraits on city streets around the world, including New York, Detroit, San Francisco, London, Bilbao, Hong Kong, Djerba, Cairo, Tokyo, and Jogjakarta.

[9] Her intricate wheatpaste portraits are created by carving wood or linoleum blocks, which are then printed by hand, or by cutting through several layers of paper at once.

[10] In a visit to Juarez, Curry met with mothers who had lost their daughters, and with activists who were working to increase public awareness and to push for justice.

The piece was installed in 2012 at Benito Juarez Plaza, the place where Sylvia Elena is thought to have disappeared, four years after it was created because of delays caused by escalating violence.

Curry’s intention behind the memorial was “that we can see the face of Sylvia Elena, and recognize our connectedness with each of the thousands of women who have gone missing, with each of the family members who mourn the loss of their brightest light, and with a town in the shadow of the U.S. border, caught in a strangle hold of incomprehensible violence.

[11] The interior and the facade of the gallery was transformed into a cityscape populated by intricate cut out figures and block-prints set within sculptural elements referencing truss-work, power-lines and elevated trains.

Drawing on Kowloon Walled City was the creative point of departure, Curry hoped to evoke the spontaneous, unregulated, and self built development that took place in the autonomous Hong Kong neighborhood[11] before it was bulldozed in 1993.

The boats were tethered by ropes to the skirts of a twenty-five-foot-high paper sculpture of two sisters embracing, the central image of the indoor portion of the show.

Her major exhibitions include Seven Contemplations at the Albright-Knox Foundation (2020), Haven Archived August 12, 2020, at the Wayback Machine at the Skissernas Museum (2017), The Light After Archived March 5, 2019, at the Wayback Machine at Library Street Collective (2016), Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum (2014) which was their first exhibition dedicated to a living street artist,[17] Honeycomb at SNOW Contemporary (2012), Anthropocene Extinction at The Institute of Contemporary Art: Boston (2011), Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea at Deitch Projects (2008), Drown Your Boats at New Image Art Gallery (2008), and Swoon[permanent dead link‍] at Deitch Projects (2005).

The exhibition showcased multiple dimensions of Curry’s practice, including the new site-specific installation Medea, that visually centers around the portrait of a home that is splitting apart, re-stagings of past landmark projects, and a survey of her socially-driven work in Braddock, Pennsylvania and Cormiers, Haiti.

[3] Swoon’s site-specific exhibitions are in close dialogue with her activism and advocacy efforts, which explore the power of art to respond to crises caused by natural disasters, structural violence, and addiction.

Participants worked with Curry, therapist and yoga instructor Jessica Radovich, and storytelling coach Heather Box of the Million Person Project in a month-long art therapy and personal storytelling course that took place inside Graterford State Correctional Institution (SCI), at the Interim House treatment center, and with Philadelphia Mural Arts Guild, a prison-to-community reentry program.

In addition to this community engagement, Curry created several portraits of those who have participated in the project, which were incorporated into a public mural at 3060 West Jefferson St in North Philadelphia.

Curry cites Dr. Gabor Mate, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, as someone who changed her perspective by helping her understand that addictions are a desperate attempt to soothe unmanageable pain.

[21] The Road Home hosted daily drop-in workshops at the Kensington Storefront, located across the street from Prevention Point, a center that provides services to people experiencing homelessness and addiction.

The project began five years after Hurricane Katrina, in response to the long-term recovery of the city that continued to impact the livelihood of residents and the local musical culture.

[22] After the initial run on Piety Street, the project created short-term performance installations in New Orleans City Park, Kyiv (Ukraine), Shreveport, Louisiana, Atlanta and Tampa, Florida.

[22] Music Box Village is the flagship project of New Orleans Airlift, a non-profit organization who foster opportunities through arts education and the creation of experimental public artworks.

This was conceived as a way to create well-paid jobs locally, fostering community reinvestment that would address the economic devastation caused by the closure of the manufacturing sector in Braddock.

The program raised funds for paid apprenticeships for local youth, as well as host field trips, workshops and youth-led projects that included creating decorative murals for their community.

Curry cites multiple sources of inspiration for Serenissima, including a brief time living on a sailboat in the Netherlands, Viking boats, and the impact of her first visit to Venice, where she was struck by the conversation between the water and architecture.

[26] She also credits the experience of the Miss Rockaway Armada for leading her to explore the possibilities of floating sculptures as a way to live and travel, while also building the knowledge and community necessary to attempt the complicated logistics of navigating rafts through the Venetian lagoon.

A fleet of three rafts, named Maria, Alice and Old Hickory navigated an open crossing of the Adriatic Sea, before moving into the protected in-land Littoral canals of Italy.

Curry led a small group of artists, engineers, and builders who connected with the village of Komye (Cormiers in French), 15 miles from the epicenter of the quake.

Each week, Klub Obzevatwa teachers introduce 30-40 local kids to arts, crafts, and building design concepts that range from drawing, cooking, tile-setting, earthquake preparedness, Haitian culture and history, and games, song and dance.

The Miss Rockaway Armada, was a collectively realized semi-utopian experiment in communal living and home-made raft navigation that travelled down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to St. Louis during two summers in 2006 and 2007.

The fact that no one died is basically a miracle, and if we had gone past Saint Louis where there are no locking dams with our boats, and our crew, and the culture we were building, it would’ve gotten really dangerous.

Heliotrope projects have been supported by Kickstarter campaigns, fundraiser events and through ongoing affordable print sales featuring the work of local artists and artisans.

2019, Swoon: Time Capsule, multi-city travelling exhibition, Fluctuart Centre d’Art Urbain, Paris, France, July 4 – September 22.