Tonika Lewis Johnson

Visual Artist and Community Activist - Changing Worlds

Tonika Lewis Johnson, a visual artist/photographer from Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, often explores urban segregation and documents the nuance and richness of the black community.

As a photographer and teaching artist, she has been engaged in building an artistic legacy that gained citywide recognition in the last two years. Johnson transformed a project, Folded Map, 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.

Alongside her teaching artist and community activism work, she is keenly invested and vocal for how urban environment is structured and its impact on our social networks. While she has helped create R.A.G.E. and the Englewood Arts Collective, she has worked extensively with Changing Worlds to further her social practice art in particular.

Photo credit: Philip Dembinski