Artwork Description
Swoon – Cicada
Dimensions:
Year: 2020
Medium: video on flash drive
Edition: ed. 3/10
Cicada, Swoon’s first major stop-motion animation, is a meditation and celebration of emergence, growth, and transformation. Her personal story acts as a central narrative, but it is infused with elements drawn from classical mythology. Recurring motifs of this exhibition such as birth, divination, endurance, suffering, strength, and healing interweave and unfold throughout the film. Here, the corporeal body serves as a vessel carrying memories and traditions. A house, a ship, and human figures split open to liberate a cast of imaginative and mythological creatures. The central figure is the “Tarantula Mother,” a half-human, half-spider allegory that evokes harrowingmemories from Swoon’s childhood. The legacy of her parents’ addiction and substance abuse adds a strong element of realism to the film, grounding its otherwise-whimsical atmosphere. As an insect, the cicada is notable for spending much of its life underground, only emerging into adulthood after thirteen to seventeen years. In Cicada the artist expresses a similar ability, one shared by all of us, to molt and burst through one’s former self in a cycle of self-realization and self-healing. Surrounded by new sculptures and her portrait series, Cicada encourages us to immerse ourselves into Swoon’s world, embracinga vivid experience embedded in the present moment.
– Aaron Ott from the screening of Cicada at the Albright-Knox, “Seven Contemplations”