Spatial artist and storyteller Andres L. Hernandez joined Tonika Lewis Johnson and Roland Knowlden where they were featured in “where the light corrupts your face,” which is a new exhibition at the South Side Community Art Center.
According to a release by the center, Hernandez, Johnson and Knowlden are spatial story tellers who explore how socio-economic and geographic oppressions shape perception of the environment. The opening reception took place on April 7 from 5 to 8 p.m.
“My work draws forward the latent potential of words, spaces, sounds and movement to elicit liberatory ways of being. I explore the embedded attitudes, histories, policies, and systems of power within and beyond our world(s) as a method of imagining and existing otherwise,” Hernandez said in the release. “I site my practice at the intersection of the social and the spatial. I consider the symbiotic, yet, fraught relationships between built and natural environments and their inhabitants, and speculate alternative pasts, presents, and futures for all. My work takes many forms, including collaborative and socially engaged works, as well as independent, studio-based practices. Drawing, installation, and writing are my preferred media, alongside sound and performance.”
Johnson is a photographer and social justice artist from the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago’s Southside. She aims to challenge the negative portrayal of Chicago’s violence and celebrate the diversity of the Black community through art. Johnson has been recognized as the 2019 Field Foundation “Leader for a New Chicago” and was the 2017 Chicagoan of the Year in Chicago Magazine.
She is currently involved in various community initiatives like the Englewood Arts Collective and Resident Association of Greater Englewood. Her Folded Map Project brings residents who live at similar addresses but miles apart on the city’s segregated North and South side. Johnson discusses racial and economic divides in these regions.
Knowlden is a Liberian-American interdisciplinary artist and architect who hails from New Jersey and currently lives in Chicago. He is interested in constructed landscapes, city planning and cultural and social implications of racialized spatial mapping. Knowlden uses painting and drawing to create abstract and experimental maps revealing tensions caused by “erasure, displacement and palimpsest.”