TIMEOUT | Swoon: The House Our Families Built

By Anna Ben Yehuda

Art lovers will be delighted to know that a new moving art installation has landed on the New York scene. The House Our Families Built is an installation by Brooklyn-based artist Caledonia Curry (you probably know her as Swoon) that debuted the last weekend of January 2021 at Brooklyn Bridge Park as part of a larger PBS initiative called "American Portrait."

The installation is a visually striking one: built on a 14-foot box truck, the diorama-style outdoor sculpture features pantings, cutouts and some live performances that dissect "the legacy of ancestral histories—whether through traditions, trauma or repeated narratives—and the ways in which they inform how we understand and talk about ourselves."

Swoon enlisted the help of her longtime collaborator Jeff Stark to come up with the work, which features stories found within the PBS American Portrait archives. Specifically, passerby can expect 15-minute live performances that "transition through emotions from humor to fear, tenderness to confrontation, encouraging people to ask where they've come from and what they can leave behind," according to the installation's official website.

Folks walking by the installation while a live performance isn't in session will instead be treated to an audio of the happening.

The roving exhibit will take up residence at Brooklyn's Prospect Park and followed by a stint in Flushing Meadows Corona Park during February 2021, eventually landing on the North Plaza of Union Square at 17th Street in Manhattan.

You can learn more about the installation and where it will be traveling to right here.