Tonika Johnson

Tonika Lewis Johnson is a visual artist/photographer from Chicago's Englewood neighborhood and a co-founder of Resident Association of Greater Englewood. As an artist, she often explores urban segregation and documents the nuance and richness of the black community.  As a trained photojournalist and teaching artist, she has been engaged in building an artistic legacy that gained citywide recognition in the last two years.  She was featured in Chicago Magazine as a 2017 Chicagoan of the Year for her photography of Englewood's everyday beauty, countering its pervasive media coverage of poverty and crime.  Her "Everyday Englewood" photography was exhibited at Loyola University's Museum of Art (LUMA) in early 2018.  Her ongoing project, Folded Map, which visually investigates disparities among Chicago residents while bringing them together to have a conversation, was also exhibited at LUMA last year.  She transformed this project into an advocacy and policy-influencing tool that invites audiences to open a dialogue and question how we are all socially impacted by racial and institutional conditions that segregate the city.  Most recently, she was named one of the Field Foundation's 2019 Leaders for a New Chicago.

 

This lecture is free and open to the public. 

Made possible by the Art Education department in collaboration with the Student Museum Coalition and Radical Art Educators. 

Persons with disabilities requesting accommodations should visit saic.edu/access.