In Conversation: SWOON

The border cities of El Paso and Juarez have a long history of utilizing visual language in the public sphere as a way to express grievances, joys, and the complex cultures of the borderland. A tradition that stems back to the indigenous pictographs found in Hueco Tanks, unfolds in the 1970’s Chicano murals of Segundo Barrio and in the practice of painting pink crosses around Ciudad Juarez to not let any femicide in the city be forgotten. Gráfica Libre, an exhibit in downtown Juarez’s new gallery Azul Arena, celebrates this community centered history. Curated by LxsDos art, the exhibit showcases over 30 local and international artists that have used their artistic practice as a form of striving towards social equity and justice.

Caledonia Curry also known as Swoon is one of the artists included in this roster of exceptional creatives. As one of the pioneers of early street art, her career of over 20 years is an inspiring example of how you do not have to restrict yourself to one medium to create your visual voice. Swoon has built and lived on rafts in the Hudson River, created installations and stained glass windows, and wheat-pasted murals throughout the world as a form of storytelling.

On a windy winter day I met Swoon in her Brooklyn studio. We sat and talked about the mural she created in Ciudad Juarez, what street art is currently inspiring her, and her new film project. Read the interview below.

© Itzel Alejandra Martinez

People see your work in exhibitions and in murals you do but it all starts somewhere. Tell us a bit about your studio practice.

My studio practice with the works that are in that show is a little different than what it is now. Now I'm working on a really unusual project for me, which is that I am developing a novel and then also a film connected to it. So it's like this whole kind of story world. So I'm writing a lot. Yesterday I was just researching actors to think about casting.

Oh, so you're doing a narrative?

Yeah, it's a narrative feature. I'm also making a little oracle deck that goes with it. So it's all these kinds of things. With the works that are in the show, it was a lot more like I would get these huge slabs of linoleum and paper and really set to work making these large scale portraits. That would take kind of weeks and weeks, just like drawing and carving and refining and printing and making sure it all worked. And I'm still doing a tiny bit of printmaking but for this upcoming project, I'm doing a lot more drawing and writing and kind of almost processes that feel a little softer, just more varied.

How did that switch of medium spark?

Just because a story came into my mind and I wrote it down. I was like, “wow, that's so funny, I'm writing a story.” It just came out and it was totally bizarre and it just wouldn't go away. I had always wanted to animate since I was in college but I was way, way, way too hyper back then. So it kind of took until I turned 40 and needed a break from the world to actually start animating.

© Itzel Alejandra Martinez

Let’s talk about the mural you created for Silvia Elena Rivera in collaboration with Waka. Can you tell me a little bit about her story? And the process of making this portrait based on her life?

It started kind of a long time ago, actually. I was taking this overland trip from the U.S. to Mexico, like riding trains and kind of doing all this hitchhiking. The thing about traveling that way that really surprised me is that you have this idea that the U.S. and Mexico have a hard border and that they're very different but when you travel overland, you're like this is a soft border in fact. We're very connected and that was my first time looking at that and being like this is not so separate as some people like to tell us.

So, I had seen all these crosses all over town in Juarez and I asked the person that we were riding with what is that? He said that's for the women that are being killed. I didn't know anything about it. It was one of those things where then I started to learn about it and I was like, you know, this feels like related to the thing of the soft border.

We learned about the situation and about the activism around the situation. We also met with community groups and did some workshops. Then I met Ramona Morales. She is just very, very involved with her daughter, Silvia Elena, who had been one of the first people to go missing in this epidemic and she just stayed with it. She stayed organizing, she stayed involved. I just really admired her for that. She really took her grief and turned it into a form of resistance, to try to fight for justice for other daughters and to help mothers who are going through the same thing. I just asked her if I could draw her daughter and later she said that it was kind of a second memorial for her.

© Itzel Alejandra Martinez

Talk to me a bit about collaborating with other artists. Why is that important to you? What is challenging?

I think the reason it's important for me is the same as what the challenges are. It's because working with other people is always going to push you to think in ways that you don't already think.

Sometimes collaboration starts with you kind of resisting what is going on and what doesn't make sense to you and then after you relax, you're like, “Oh my God, this is totally brilliant. I never would have worked in this way. I wouldn't have even gotten this way. That's why I was resisting that, because my brain couldn't conceptualize it. But in fact, now I just learned this amazing thing.” So that's one of the big, big, big joys of working in that way is how it just stretches you in as an artist. But also it's about community, we build those networks and rely on each other.

You have exhibited in private gallery space and of course your work lives in the public sphere. Where do you feel most connected?

I feel like for me there's a kernel that matters the most and it's not about the street or the fancy gallery, it's about the kid that I was when I grew up in Florida. I really want my work to have intense rigor but I also want to be accessible and sometimes it puts me in a funny position, in regards to the art world.

One of the projects that I have been inspired by recently has been the Unmute Gaza project because I really feel like it’s allowing street art to be like this communication across boundaries and in public spaces. For me, that's still like the beating heart of street art. That's where I started. In this very do it yourself and just reclaim the space kind of spirit.