TO FEED THE HUNGRY GHOST is a series of artworks that consists of four canvases and several audio files

A leader in the street art movement, Caledonia Curry, aka Swoon, is best known for her stylized portraiture of marginalized individuals. As an avid traveler, Swoon dignifies those left behind or struggling in a globalized landscape through intimate portraits. Her work emerges from intense immersive experiences and dialogue within diverse communities.

Swoon approaches her work with compassion and understanding to develop interactions that allow both art and community to thrive. Through storytelling and public murals as a means to address the cyclical nature of unhealed trauma and addiction, Swoon’s explorations blossom into artworks rooted in research and collaboration with those affected.

Swoon presents a series of pasted paper portraits of Yaya, George, Sonya, as well as her own mother and father, all of whom struggled with addiction in the United States, a country that continues to criminalize drug use.

The use of wheat-paste as a choice of material and technique reflects on Swoon’s interest in architecture and ephemerality; differently from a painted mural, the paste-up has a life cycle of its own and is an ongoing event in itself: the color fades gradually and the paper slowly wrinkles and deteriorates; this is all part of Swoon’s concept and relates to the subjects she is addressing.

This collection of artworks was originally part of the Urban(R)Evolution exhibition, held in Lisbon in 2023.