THE TRIENNIAL 2025

Caledonia Curry a.k.a. Swoon

In the Well: The Stories We Tell About Addiction, 2025

Mixed media

Caledonia Curry is an artist, writer, and filmmaker who explores the depths of human complexity through the portrayal of individuals. Her current work questions the prevailing narratives surrounding addiction. She was inspired by Boston-based medical researchers Judith Herman and Bessel van der Kolk, whose work revolutionized the understanding of the inherent link between trauma and addiction. 

In the Well: The Stories We Tell About Addiction is a multipart artwork composed of the sculpture Sibylant House located here in the atrium of Boston Public Library, illustrations in Gallery J from June through October, and a series of divination card prints, Oracle Deck, that visitors can find wheatpasted throughout downtown Boston. The sculpture and prints are derived from the artist’s novella, Sibylant Sisters, a story about two sisters who live with a witch beholden to a noxious substance brewed in the well of toads. Through a charming story of girlhood imagination, Swoon challenges how drug addiction is perceived, explained, and often misunderstood. Workshops and public programs will further engage audiences to establish deeper levels of understanding and invite us to reconsider preconceptions surrounding addiction—ultimately highlighting the potential of art and the creative process to catalyze social change and interpersonal healing.

Monday - Thursday: 9am - 8pm
Friday - Saturday: 9am - 5pm
Sunday: 11am - 5pm

Boston Public Library, Central Library
700 Boylston St.
Boston, MA 02116

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Swoon

b. 1977, based in New York

Caledonia Curry, known 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 exploring 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 in Braddock and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Komye, Haiti, that address crises ranging from natural disasters to the opioid epidemic. 

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.