Tonika Lewis Johnson – MacArthur Basis

About Tonika’s Work

Tonika Lewis Johnson is a photographer and social justice artist exposing the impacts of systematic disinvestment in city communities. Johnson makes use of pictures, maps, and multimedia storytelling to articulate the huge disparities in situations, infrastructure, and funding between Chicago’s neighborhoods. At the identical time, she creates pathways for residents to start the method of restitution and restore.

Johnson’s Folded Map Project (2018–ongoing) illustrates how a long time of dangerous insurance policies have divided Chicago socially and bodily. Johnson pairs corresponding residential addresses on the North and South Sides of the town’s grid of streets. She then paperwork the contrasts—and commonalities—between life on the 2 sides in portraits of the principally White residents at dwelling on the North Side and the predominantly Black residents at their houses in South Side neighborhoods. Additionally, she facilitates conferences between “map twins,” residents who reside at corresponding North and South Side addresses, typically miles aside on the identical avenue. These conferences allow frank conversations and set up new bonds throughout the town. The venture has expanded right into a multifaceted initiative—together with a brief movie, a faculty curriculum, and an motion package—that sparks cross-neighborhood connection. Building on this work, Johnson created the general public artwork set up, Inequity for Sale (2021), to show one of many causes of decay in South Side neighborhoods like Englewood, the place Johnson is a lifelong resident. In the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, many homes in Englewood have been bought to Black households underneath unscrupulous land sale contracts. These contracts demanded considerably greater than honest market worth and granted possession solely after the total quantity of the contract was paid, successfully denying consumers fairness of their houses. In entrance of homes bought or misplaced by way of land use contracts, Johnson put in vibrant yellow plaques describing the injustice of how residents misplaced their houses. An accompanying podcast, pictures, and recorded interviews with affected residents additional educate Chicagoans concerning the histories of their communities.

Johnson’s newest venture is UnBlocked Englewood (2023–ongoing), developed in partnership with the Chicago Bungalow Association. The arts-driven venture goals to reclaim vacant heaps and restore houses that have been impacted by land sale contracts and in want of expensive repairs, reimagining dwelling enchancment and neighborhood revitalization as public artwork. Johnson’s artistic method to reparative motion led to a public arts grant from the City of Chicago, and thus far half of the venture’s 25 houses have been repaired. Through a apply that solutions historical past with motion, Johnson realizes the potential for artwork to create thriving communities and offers a roadmap for the various different cities going through comparable challenges arising from entrenched socioeconomic divides.