A Far-Flung Life of Wonderment, in Art and Activism
藝術與行動的神奇生活
By Melena Ryzik

With a glowing paper cutout pinned over her heart, the artist known as Swoon led a procession through the Brooklyn Museum early one summer night to her installation “Submerged Motherlands,” a site-specific jumble that includes two cantilevered rafts, seemingly cobbled out of junk; a tree, of fabric and wire, that reaches to the rotunda; and nooks of stenciled portraits.
心口上別著螢光的一個剪紙，人稱史伍恩的藝術家帶領著一行人，在夏日的一個初晚，穿越布魯克林博物館，來到她的裝置藝術「沉沒的祖國」前，一件在特定場地上雜亂作品，包括活像垃圾堆砌出的兩個懸臂筏；以布料和電線完成，高達圓形廳頂的一株樹；角落有模板噴畫。

A sellout crowd was there for a film premiere and multimedia concert, documenting and inspired by Swoon’s travel on the rafts. As the audience sat spellbound, Swoon flitted around, taking it all in.
爆滿的人群聚集在那裡，觀賞一個影片的首映和欣賞一場多媒體音樂會，它記錄史伍恩的排筏之旅，靈感也來自那裡。觀眾看得入神，史伍恩則走來走去，張羅全場。

“There’s that feeling that you get when you see something that you don’t understand the origin of: wonderment,” she said. “I love to be a part of making those moments happen.”
她說：「大家有那種感覺，你看到某物，但不清楚它的由來的那種神奇感。我很樂於成為創造這種神奇時刻的一分子。」

Born Caledonia Curry, Swoon started her career as a street artist, but quickly came to the attention of gallerists and museum curators, which let her expand to installation and performance art, often with an activist, progressive bent. Her paper-cut portraits and cityscapes, affixed to walls in hardscrabble places, are meant to disintegrate in place, a refrain to the life around them.
史伍恩本名卡萊多妮亞．柯里，最早是街頭藝術家，但很快就吸引畫廊和博物館策展人的目光，成為裝置與表演藝術家，且屬於行動與先進傾向的一派。她將剪紙肖像和都市景觀黏貼在貧窮地區的牆上，刻意讓它們就地崩壞，反映周遭的生活。

“When you look at the work of a lot of her peers, hers stands apart,” said Sarah Suzuki, an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which bought several Swoon pieces for its permanent collection in 2005. “There is a real observational aspect to what she’s doing,” documenting her travels and missions.
紐約現代藝術館副策展人莎拉．鈴木說：「觀賞許多她同儕的作品，會發現她特別傑出。」該館2005年購買史伍恩數件作品做為館藏。她說，「她的作品有真實觀察的面向」，記錄了她的旅行與使命。

In New Orleans, Swoon helped create a shantytown where each house is a musical instrument. In Braddock, Pennsylvania, a dwindling postindustrial landscape, she worked on an arts center in an abandoned church.
在紐奧良，史伍恩協助打造一個貧民區，每個房子都是一件樂器。在只剩沒落的後工業景觀的賓州布拉多克市，她將廢棄的教堂改造成藝術中心。

After the Haiti earthquake, she alighted, with a team of volunteers, to build colorful houses.
海地震災發生後，她與志工團隊前往當地，重建起豐富多彩的房屋。

Unlike other street artists, Swoon’s work isn’t based in “cynicism or a critique of commercial culture,” Ms. Suzuki said. “There’s an emotional core there.”
鈴木說，有別於其他街頭藝術家，史伍恩的作品並不植基於「憤世嫉俗或是對商業文化的批判」，「箇中蘊含一種情感核心」。

Now 36, Swoon is grappling with her own choices – she pours most of her income back into her projects.
現年36歲的史伍恩正為她自己的選擇努力以赴，收入的絕大部分最後又投入新的計畫。

Most of her projects are financed through the sale of her work, whose prices run to the tens of thousands of dollars.
她的多數計畫財源來自出售售價可達數萬美元的個人作品。

When necessary, she will turn directly to collectors to subsidize events. “I think of money as a verb,” she said, “because you have it and it has to go out in the world to do things.”
必要時，她會直接找上收藏家，找錢補貼計畫。她說：「我覺得錢是一個動詞，擁有它後，它必須走出去，走進世界做些事情。」

Other artists in her position might seek out corporate sponsorship or branding, but not Swoon. Her friend JR, the French artist, said he was impressed by her ethos. “The fact that she does it the way she does, and just struggles her own way” allows her “complete freedom” as an artist, he said.
其他和她地位相同的藝術家，可能尋求企業贊助或自創品牌，但史伍恩不這麼做。她的朋友，法國藝術家JR說，她的精神令他感動。他說，「事實上，她以自己的方式做事，而自己勉強支撐」，讓她享有一個藝術家該有的「完全自由」。

Swoon employs six people in her studio, and many more for projects. “I make a lot of money, and I spend a lot of money,” she said.
史伍恩的工作室聘用了六個人，各項計畫也雇用很多人。她說：「我賺得很多，也花得很多。」

She still lives in the same apartment in Brooklyn that she’s had since her early 20s, and she sometimes worries about how she will pay the $1,000 monthly rent.
她仍居住於布魯克林的同一棟公寓內，她20歲出頭即住在那裡，有時還得擔心1000美元的租金是否有著落。

Growing up in Daytona Beach, Florida, known to friends and family as Callie, Swoon long considered herself the scrappy sort. At 10, she began taking oil painting classes; her classmates were mostly retirees doing beachscapes and sunsets. But her talent was evident. “I got this epic amount of encouragement, and I just rose to it,” she said.
史伍恩成長於佛羅里達州的代托納海灘，朋友和家人喊她凱麗，一向認為自己屬於鬥志旺盛型。10歲時，她開始上油畫班；同學多是退休人士，畫的是海灘景觀和日落。她的才華與眾不同。她說：「我獲得極大的鼓勵，我只是順勢而為。」

In high school, she started selling her paintings and ceramics to her teachers. In Brooklyn, she studied painting at the Pratt Institute. “People would email me, and I’d take them to my house, and I’d be like, ‘Do you want to buy this art that’s on my floor?’ ”
高中時，她開始賣畫和陶瓷器給她的老師。在布魯克林，她在普拉特學院學畫。她說：「人們寄電子郵件給我，我會帶他們到我家，然後我會這樣問：『你想買我地上的這件藝術品嗎？』」

For Swoon, art is a way to process monumental change, on a global and personal level. “Submerged Motherlands,” commissioned after Hurricane Sandy, was meant to be about rising sea levels; after the death of her mother, from cancer, Swoon found herself adding more maternal imagery. “Dawn and Gemma,” a grand portrait of a breast-feeding woman, dominates the installation’s entry, providing, Swoon said, a new sense of nurture to the piece.
對史伍恩而言，藝術是在全球或個人層面上處理巨大變化的一種方式。「沉沒的祖國」是颶風珊迪來襲後受人委託創作的作品，主題是上升的海平面；她的母親因癌症去世後，史伍恩發現自己在作品中加入了較多母性的圖像。巨大的哺乳婦女肖像「黎明與芽」，是裝置藝術入口的主體，史伍恩說，它賦予作品新的孕育感。

“When I was a kid, and I was like, ‘I want to be an artist,’ I had all these dreams and all these thoughts: ‘What’s it going to be like, and what am I going to make?’ ” she said. “And I just feel like I have exceeded my wildest dreams by, like, 5000.”
她說：「我還是孩子時，我就這樣想『我要成為藝術家，我有所有這些夢想，所有這些想法：『未來會是如何，我要創造些什麼。』我覺得我已超越我的瘋狂夢想，大概五千個。」

Now, with projects beckoning all over the world, she said she could perhaps afford to pause for a moment and think, “where is my compass needle pointing?”
如今，隨著引人入勝的作品遍及全世界，她說，或許她已能暫停片刻，思考「我的羅盤的指針會指向何方？」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/arts/design/swoon-blurs-the-line-between-art-and-activism.html

Video：Caledonia Curry started her career as a street artist, but leapfrogged to museums and galleries. Now she has expanded her work to include installation and performance art, often with an activist bent.
http://nyti.ms/1zVudkT

2014-08-19聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 王麗娟譯 原文參見紐時週報十二版上