OPENING EVENT
TONIKA JOHNSON AND BISA BUTLER IN CONVERSATION
2024 and 2022 Gordon Parks Foundation Art Fellows
February 26, 2025 6:00pm
The Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery
48 Wheeler Avenue, Pleasantville, New York, 10570
Click here to register.
Tonika Johnson, a 2024 Gordon Parks Foundation Art Fellow, is a photographer, activist, and lifelong resident of Englewood, a neighborhood in Chicago’s South Side. Her work, which investigates the long history of segregation in the city and racist housing practices such as redlining, reframes the narrative of divested South Side communities and mobilizes people and resources for positive change.
As a teenager growing up in Englewood, Johnson was inspired to choose the camera as a tool for social justice when she encountered Gordon Parks’s work. She began by photographing everyday lives in her own community, capturing the pride, joy, and resilience there and defying stereotypical portrayals of Greater Englewood as blighted, poor, and crime-ridden. Since then, her vision of justice has expanded to innovative collaborations, public art installations, and community initiatives that have led to policy change, historic preservation, and neighborhood revitalization—endeavors contributing to the economic stability of Greater Englewood and the wealth-building capacity of its residents. This exhibition includes selections from several of these projects, together with short documentary films about Johnson’s work. Accompanying these are a poem by Englewood author Leslé Honoré and photographs taken by Gordon Parks in Chicago—a city where he briefly resided in the 1940s and to which he returned while on assignments for Life magazine. Extending Parks’s legacy, Johnson demonstrates how artistic practices can be implements for advocacy and change.
Tonika Johnson is a 2024 Gordon Parks Foundation fellow. She is the co-founder of the Englewood Arts Collective and the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, where she actively challenges and reshapes narratives about Chicago’s South Side. With a sharp focus on urban segregation and a commitment to preserving Chicago's Black cultural memory, Tonika uses her art and advocacy to confront systemic inequities embedded in our built environment, policies, and social networks. A trained photojournalist and former teaching artist, Tonika has earned widespread recognition for her impactful artistry. Chicago Magazine named her a Chicagoan of the Year in 2017, celebrating her photography that captures the everyday beauty of Englewood. Her projects, including From the INside and Everyday Rituals, have been exhibited at prominent venues such as Rootwork Gallery, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Harold Washington Library Center, and Loyola University's Museum of Art (LUMA). Tonika’s groundbreaking Folded Map project debuted at LUMA in 2018, uncovering stark disparities between "map twins"—residents living miles apart on opposite ends of the same streets in racially segregated neighborhoods. Through photography and storytelling, the project has sparked critical conversations about Chicago's racial and economic divides. In 2020, she formalized Folded Map into a nonprofit organization, where she serves as Creative Executive Officer, using the platform to address the social impacts of systemic segregation. Tonika’s creative vision extends beyond traditional art installations. In 2021, as the Artist as Instigator for the National Public Housing Museum, she launched Inequity for Sale, a powerful project exposing the exploitative Land Sale Contracts that devastated Black homeowners in Greater Englewood during the 1950s and 1960s. This work earned her recognition as one of Landmark Illinois' 2022 Influencers and the Metropolitan Planning Council’s Community Impact Award in 2023. Her latest initiative, UnBlocked Englewood, reflects her innovative approach to reversing the damage caused by racist housing policies. Partnering with the Chicago Bungalow Association, Tonika spearheads the ambitious effort to rehabilitate an entire block in her home neighborhood, Englewood—an area deeply scarred by predatory housing practices. The project focuses on transforming a block where descendants of families impacted by Land Sale Contracts still reside. By providing critical home repairs, beautification, and fostering community cohesion, UnBlocked Englewood showcases the power of art as a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization. Redefining the project as public art, Tonika creatively secured funding through Chicago’s public arts program, demonstrating what it takes to uplift communities after decades of systemic disinvestment. In 2024, Tonika released her first book, Don’t Go: Stories of Segregation and How to Disrupt It (Polity Publishing), co-written with Dr. Maria Krysan. The book reveals how generations of Chicagoans have perpetuated fears about the city’s South and West sides, presenting essays from everyday Chicagoans—those who defied warnings to avoid “don’t go” neighborhoods and those who live in these very same neighborhoods. Through these personal stories, the book examines the deeply racist roots of these narratives, their ongoing impact, and offers actionable solutions to segregation. The book expands the mission of Folded Map into a narrative-driven platform for change. Beyond her artistic practice, Tonika’s leadership has been instrumental in shaping Chicago’s cultural and civic landscape. Named one of Field Foundation's Leaders for a New Chicago in 2019, she serves on the Cultural Advisory Council of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). Her commitment to reimagining equity through art and advocacy continues to inspire transformative change in Chicago and beyond.
