Swoon at Deitch Projects Long Island City during the installation of the gallery component of her 2008 solo show, Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea. (Photo: Tod Seelie)

Installation of the gallery component of Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, Deitch Projects 2008. (Photo: Tod Seelie)

Detail of Anthropocene Extinction (2011), a site-specific installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. (Photo: Tod Seelie) 

A 2013 street paste in Grottaglie, Italy. (Photo: Swoon Studio)

Swoon’s 2014 installation for the Goldman Family’s Wynwood Walls public art program. (Photo: Swoon Studio)

Swoon and her team install a site-specific work at Facebook Headquarters in Palo Alto, California. (Photo: Swoon Studio)    

Exterior detail of a building constructed as part of the Konbit Shelter Project, a comprehensive and locally sustained community building initiative in post-earthquake Haiti. (Photo: Tod Seelie)   

Buildings constructed as part of the Konbit Shelter Project, a comprehensive and locally sustained building project in post-earthquake Haiti. (Photo: Tod Seelie)   

An immersive shelter within Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum, 2014. (Photo: Tod Seelie)

Detail from Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum; the interior roof of an immersive shelter. (Photo: Tod Seelie)

Detail from the interior of a Konbit Shelter Project building in Haiti. (Photo: Tod Seelie)

A building constructed as part of the Konbit Shelter Project, a comprehensive and locally sustained community building initiative in post-earthquake Haiti. (Photo: Tod Seelie)     

Installation of La Boca del Lobo (2006), a collaborative exhibition at Philadelphia’s Black Floor Gallery. (Photo: Tod Seelie)      

Ice Queen (2011) installed at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art for group exhibition Art in the Streets. (Photo: Tod Seelie)

When the Brooklyn Museum asked Swoon to do a site-specific installation, she chose to do it in the rotunda because of its architectural specificity. (Photo: Tod Seelie)    

Submerged Motherlands, Swoon’s 2014 solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, was centered about a 65-foot tree made of dyed ribbon and paper cutouts. (Photo: Tod Seelie)   

Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum, 2014. (Photo: Tod Seelie)

Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum (2014) provided a context to revitalize Swimming Cities of Serenissima (Venice 2009), the actual rafts from which were shipped from Italy to Brooklyn for the exhibition. (Photo: Tod Seelie)        

For Swimming Cities of Serenissima, Swoon’s third Swimming Cities project, the artist and 35 collaborators set sail in Slovenia, travelling across the Adriatic Sea and shaking up the 2009 Venice Biennale. (Photo: Tod Seelie)       

Swimming Cities of Serenissima, Venice, 2009. Though Swoon sailed first on the Mississippi River in 2006-2007 (Miss Rockaway Armada) and the Hudson River in 2008 (Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea), the Swimming Cities concept was partially inspired the visual of Venice as a city rising up out of the ocean. (Photo: Tod Seelie)     

Swimming Cities of Serenissima: Stopping along the way to perform live music, puppetry, and more, Swoon and 35 artistic collaborators sailed across the Adriatic Sea from Slovenia to the 2009 Venice Biennale. (Photo: Tod Seelie)         

Swimming Cities of Serenissima: Swoon and 35 artistic collaborators sailed across the Adriatic Sea to crash the 2009 Venice Biennale. (Photo: Tod Seelie)      

One of the installations Swoon contributed to the Djerbahood Project (Galerie Itinerrance’s “open-air museum” street art project in Tunisia), the 2014 piece is inspired by the Braddock Tiles community arts initiative in Braddock, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Swoon Studio)          

An example of the portraiture motifs Swoon employs across her work, the sea goddess Thalassa was the subject of a site-specific installation at the New Orleans Museum of Art as well as a two-story paste on the exterior of an abandoned church in Braddock, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Tod Seelie)        

Sea goddess Thalassa at the centerpiece of Swoon's 2013 piece for the Goldman family's Bowery Mural Wall, which reacted to the local devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

Thalassa, a site-specific installation at the New Orleans Museum of Art, 2011. (Photo: Tod Seelie) 

Installation of La Boca del Lobo (2006), a collaborative exhibition at Philadelphia’s Black Floor Gallery. (Photo: Tod Seelie)      

A 2010 pasted work adorning the door of a formerly abandoned church in Braddock, Pennsylvania – now home to the Braddock Tiles community arts initiative. (Photo: Tod Seelie)     

A 2006 "Miss Rockaway" paste on New York's Lower East Side. (Photo: Swoon Studio)     

A 2010 Paris street paste of “Cairo” (Photo: Swoon Studio)         

Swoon's portrait of her father. (Photo: Swoon Studio)