An Artist Sails Her Work Down the Mississippi, Docks in a Museum

Caledonia Dance Curry, the artist known as Swoon, started on the margins of the art world 15 years ago, pasting intricately drawn portraits on buildings and construction sites around New York City. But she gained fame in the art scene after she marshaled a crew to build rafts — fantastical, jerry-rigged contraptions made of construction scrap that somehow float. Then she sailed these boats down the Mississippi and Hudson Rivers, like an environmentalist Huck Finn. “People really connected with it,” she tells Kurt Andersen. “Along the river people would constantly say, ‘I’ve always dreamed of doing this.’”

See a slideshow below.

The work isn’t a lark, though. They’re more a fantastical response to real conditions, somewhat like the film Beasts of the Southern Wild, set during Hurricane Katrina. Swoon’s rafts borrow a shanty-town look that references poor coastal communities that are most vulnerable to rising seas. “It’s a bit of sci-fi thinking — bits of cities that had broken off from their coastal perches and evolved and changed and moved around and in some way were seeking a home,” she explains of the boats’ appearance.

After living on the boats during their trips down rivers and around Venice, some of Swoon’s collaborators found it hard to bring them into a museum. “These crafts really represent some of the most incredible times of our lives,” she says. “There’s a lot of memories going on in here. I think for a lot of folks, it was really emotional and a little bit difficult to see them as artifacts, rather than as your floating home, this incredible place.”

“Submerged Motherlands,” Swoon’s first solo show, is on view at the Brooklyn Museum through August 24, 2014.

Slideshow: The Art of Swoon