{"id":13428,"date":"2025-10-09T19:15:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T19:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artsmidwest.org\/?p=13428"},"modified":"2025-10-09T19:52:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T19:52:44","slug":"midwest-artist-2025-macarthur-fellow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsmidwest.org\/stories\/midwest-artist-2025-macarthur-fellow\/","title":{"rendered":"Midwest Artist Receives the 2025 MacArthur \u2018Genius\u2019 Grant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Twenty-two individuals from across the world have been named the 2025 MacArthur Fellows<\/a>. Among them is Tonika Lewis Johnson<\/a>, a Chicago-based photographer and social justice artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 1981, the MacArthur Foundation has celebrated individuals with \u201cexceptional creativity\u201d with this fellowship award (known as the \u201cgenius grants\u201d). The 2025 MacArthur Fellows will each receive a no-strings-attached grant of $800,000 (paid over five years) in recognition of their work and their creative potential for change-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hailing from the South Side\u2019s Englewood neighborhood in Chicago, Johnson\u2019s work holds up a mirror to her city and invites others to take a closer look. Through photography, maps, and multimedia storytelling, she reveals how decades of disinvestment have shaped the city\u2019s neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI create participatory art projects that help people understand and see systemic inequities, but also create pathways for them to disrupt them,\u201d says Johnson in an interview with the MacArthur Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n \u201cThe data that we hear around segregation is truly about each and every one of our lives. That history isn’t something that should be hidden,\u201d says artist Tonika Lewis Johnson. \u201cThat’s what eventually got me to become a multimedia artist. I needed different mediums to contribute to this vast history and to distill it in a way that can connect to people.\u201d\n <\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n \n \n <\/figure>\n\n
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One of her most well-known projects,\u00a0Folded Map<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2018\u2013ongoing), explores how Chicago\u2019s grid tells a story of segregation. Johnson pairs up \u201cmap twins\u201d\u2014people who live at the same address number on the North and South Sides\u2014and photographs them at home.<\/p>\n

The images, and the conversations that follow, uncover stark contrasts in wealth and infrastructure, but also surprising similarities between neighbors who might otherwise never meet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt offers you a new way to think about these issues, because if segregation was engineered, then it also can be engineered for repair,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Over time,\u00a0Folded Map<\/em>\u00a0has grown beyond photographs into a short film, a school curriculum, and an action kit\u2014all tools to spark understanding across the city\u2019s divides.<\/p>\n

Her latest project, UnBlocked Englewood<\/em><\/a> (2023\u2013ongoing), has repaired over a dozen homes as part of an effort to revitalize a city block in one of Chicago\u2019s most disinvested areas.<\/p>\n

“The project demonstrates how helping a specific block heal through home repairs, beautification of the block, is art in and of itself,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

The project, a collaboration with the Chicago Bungalow Association and the city\u2019s public arts grant program, has also led to a mural, new signage, and assisted residents in purchasing city-owned vacant lots they have been caring for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want my projects to help people feel confident that learning, listening, and going across divides is really a pathway to healing,\u201d says Johnson.<\/p>\n

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