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.

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, her red curls bobbing, flitted around, snapping photos, taking it all in.

"There's that feeling that you get when you see something that you don't understand the origin of: wonderment," she sa...