Can a Folded Map Unite Us?
A conversation on segregation and diversity with social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson
What can a map of a city tell you about its human history and the connections between its people? The work of Chicago-based artist and activist Tonika Lewis Johnson shows us that the answer to this question depends not only on the map, but also what you do with it.
Johnson grew up on Chicago’s South Side, in a neighborhood known to many outsiders as a dangerous place. She went to high school on the North Side, taking the bus through neighborhoods that were very different from hers — and that got her thinking about her city’s geography, history and segregation.
As an adult, Johnson did something seemingly simple that is now raising awareness about the negative impacts of segregation on all of us and breaking down barriers between Chicagoans: She folded a map of Chicago in half so its North and South sides touch. She then used this folded map as a basis for artistic exploration, investigating what divides and unites the North and South sides, using Chicago’s grid system and corresponding north/south addresses and neighborhoods as the basis.
The result is the Folded Map Project, a multimedia project that combines photography, videography and dialogue among Chicagoans to reveal the depth of segregation in the city and create meaningful conversations among people whose lives would otherwise have been unlikely to intersect.
At a recent Civic Commons Studio in Macon, Georgia, Bronlynn Thurman of the GAR Foundation hosted a conversation with Tonika Lewis Johnson to learn about her work and its impact.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Bronlynn Thurman [BT]: Tell us about the Folded Map Project. What is it? What inspired it?
Tonika Lewis Johnson [TLJ]: I grew up in the Greater Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. It’s on the city’s South Side, one of the largest neighborhoods in the city and about 99% Black. Everyone has heard of the South Side of Chicago — and if you’re not from there, you’ve probably heard you shouldn’t go. That it’s dangerous.
Systemic racism has impacted the South Side for generations. In Englewood alone, the neighborhood’s population declined from about 70,000 to 51,000 between 2010 to 2017. Eighteen schools have closed since 2002, and almost 3,000 housing units were lost between 2010 and 2020.
And yet my childhood was beautiful — I played outside every day, riding my bike, going to the corner store with my best friend.
For high school, I went to Lane Tech High School. It’s a selective-enrollment high school 15 miles north of Englewood, with a very diverse population of 4,000 students from all around Chicago. I took the bus every day, and as I looked out the window, listening to my Walkman, I would notice how different my neighborhood was than the neighborhood my high school was in.
My neighborhood had tons of vacant lots, and Lane Tech’s neighborhood did not. My neighborhood had hundreds of storefront churches, and there were none in the neighborhood of my high school. My neighborhood had so many beauty supply stores, and I didn’t see any up north.
And I would always wonder: Why is that?
And I always paid attention to the streets. Even though they looked different, they had the same name in both neighborhoods: Ashland, Western, Wolcott, Paulina.
But the real fun started when I got to school. I met kids who I felt were reflections of me but from all over the city. I met my first group of Latino friends from neighborhoods like Humboldt Park and Wicker Park. My first Polish friend. I had Black friends who were first-generation immigrants from countries all around the world, like Belize. I had Black friends who were Black like me, but from the West Side. I had Chinese friends, Korean friends, Filipino friends.
Every day for four years, we got to know each other’s cultures, each other’s neighborhoods. And we quickly got to learn that the best way to truly know a location is through your friendships.
What we also realized was how segregated Chicago is. Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in our country, and it’s been that way for decades.
As I thought about my commute, I realized I was riding through Chicago’s segregation. And I started to understand the connection between race, geography and my city’s segregation.
I started the Folded Map Project so we can use segregation as the thing that connects us.
I realized that if you fold the map of Chicago in half at its zero point — downtown, on Madison Avenue — the neighborhoods that would touch each other on that map would be Englewood on the South Side and Edgewater, Rogers Park and Andersonville on the North Side — neighborhoods that, although just 15 miles apart, look totally different.
I started by photographing the differences, using addresses that are the same, except one is on the North Side and the other is on the South Side. For example, 6720 N Ashland and 6720 S Ashland. Same street, same distance from downtown, very different neighborhoods. I wanted to show how different they look — how the sidewalks are cracked on the South Side, the building is less maintained. Things that have nothing to do with gun violence, only with investment.
Another example: 6900 N Ashland and 6925 S Ashland. Both are the location of bus stops. The intersection at 6900 S Ashland is a much bigger intersection, but the bus stop doesn’t have a bench or a bus shelter. Compare that to 6900 N Ashland, where there’s a bench and the location is much more maintained.
BT: Thinking about the Folded Map Project, what was something that surprised you?
TLJ: Once I started photographing homes, I started meeting the people who lived inside of them. One of the first people I met was Jennifer, who lived in the North Side’s Edgewater neighborhood. She was the first person outside of my immediate social circle who I explained the project to, and she was interested. She said she’d never thought about the fact that her address also existed on the South Side.
When I asked her if she had ever been to Englewood, she said no. Then, when I asked her if she wanted to meet another Englewood resident, she said yes. So she and her husband, Wade, agreed to meet Nanette.
After this first meeting, I knew that I was onto something powerful. After answering my questions, Nanette, Wade and Jennifer talked about their shared interests, like beer, walks and organic food. They bonded. So I knew I wanted to pair another group of people together.
Pretty soon, I started to call these people “map twins.”
The media coverage made the conversations feel like cute snapshots, but we asked deeper questions. Questions like: How did you come to live in your neighborhood? What’s your place of peace? How would you describe your neighborhood? What’s missing from it? How much do you pay for rent, or how much did you pay for your home?
Talking about these things can be a cringey process. We don’t usually make the space to talk about these topics with each other, especially across divides. But through Folded Map, people are having some of the conversations and creating the understanding I had with people from a wide range of backgrounds at my high school, as a teenager. Those powerful moments I remember, like when my Latino friends explained why it hurt to be called an illegal alien.
I saw the map twins go through the same process. Answering the questions was uncomfortable for them, but educational. And people participated, they kept going through that discomfort, because they wanted to do something about segregation in Chicago.
Wade, Jennifer and Nanette are still friends — in fact, they expanded the project themselves. They created “block twins” to encourage neighbors to meet one another, with people coming from predominantly white neighborhoods on the North Side to predominantly Black neighborhoods on the South Side to hang out, garden and spend time together.
BT: So much of this work started with you being an active and engaged resident. Tell us about your journey toward using art as a mechanism for change.
TLJ: The people who get called activists, a lot of times they’re just residents who care. Growing up, I saw Chicago neighborhoods through different lenses. That led to me wanting to become an advocate for my home neighborhood. I wanted to combine my passion for art and photography with learning about the history of my neighborhood and my city.
One avenue for this is the Folded Map Action Kit. It encourages people to visit neighborhoods unlike theirs and run errands so they can understand how different life is in other neighborhoods. It’s a partnership with the City of Chicago Office of Equity & Racial Justice.
I’ve also created Inequity for Sale, a project that maps homes sold to aspiring Black homeowners on land sale contracts. Land sale contracts were a discriminatory housing process where homes were sold at an extremely high markup to Black families, but the families also didn’t own the homes, while thinking they did. Close to 600 homes were sold this way to Black families in the 1950s and 60s in Englewood, and many of those homes were then taken from those families. It’s a reason why there are so many abandoned and vacant homes on the South Side.
To raise awareness about this, I created land markers for some of the homes so we can acknowledge what happened and to memorialize the homeowners.
BT: What gives you hope? And how do you care for yourself in these difficult times?
TLJ: Seeing people have ideas and questions after they engage with my work — something that makes them see the potential or possibility of what we can achieve when we’re given the space to be transparent and honest.
One example is the Don’t Go Project, which is about how many white people have been told not to go to the South Side of Chicago. For this project, I partnered with sociologist Maria Krysan to interview white people in Chicago, asking them to share stories of when they were told not to go, to reflect on moments in childhood when they were taught anti-Blackness.
Oftentimes when we talk about segregation, we focus on how it negatively impacts Black people and people of color, but the inequities of segregation hurt us all. Segregation impacts white people in ways they have to uncover and unlearn. People are finding more ways to be honest and transparent. It’s gonna get ugly, but transparency is important for bringing more diversity into our social movements and creating more pathways for racial healing.
For me, self-care was leaving my full-time job to do this work full time — turning my art project into a non-profit. I also prioritize rest and napping — saying no and taking naps.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
