CHICAGO, IL.- The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago is presenting Chicago Stories: Recent Works by Carlos Javier Ortiz and David Schalliol from April 11 – July 7, 2019. In response to Birmingham, Alabama, 1963: Dawoud Bey/Black Star, this exhibition showcases photographs and films by Carlos Javier Ortiz and David Schalliol pulled from the museum’s permanent collection and the Midwest Photographers Project (MPP). Both artists separately investigate forms of systemic racism in Chicago and beyond through the lens of individual stories.
Carlos Javier Ortiz (American, b. 1977 Puerto Rico) considers contemporary black life in comparison to the ideals of the Great Migration, which took place from 1915 to 1970 when six million African Americans left the South to find new opportunities in the North. Illustrating socioeconomic patterns that have paved the way for a cycle of poverty and violence, his two projects, A Thousand Midnights (2016) and We All We Got (2014), document youth and families in Chicago from multiple perspectives over the course of many years. Ortiz focuses on those affected by gun violence, casting light on the larger forces fostering recurring tragedies in the city of Chicago.
Long interested in the abandonment and dereliction of residential structures, sociologist and photographer David Schalliol (American, b. 1976) questions the ever-changing urban landscape as it relates to larger race and class inequities. His feature-length film, The Area (2018), follows a community activist, Deborah Payne, as she fights a multi-billion-dollar intermodal freight company in its quest to buy and demolish over 400 homes owned by African American families in her Chicago neighborhood of Englewood. The film is paired with Schalliol’s images of lone buildings centered between vacant lots, appearing as shrines to disappearing neighborhoods. “Instead of seeing one peculiar building, we see the legacy and immediacy of urban transformation," says Schalliol. "Instead of asking ‘What happened to this house?’ we ask, ‘What is causing this phenomenon?’”
On Thursday, May 2, the MoCP will present a panel discussion entitled Chicago Stories: Unpacking Segregation in Chicago, Then and Now, which will explore the segregated history of Chicago neighborhoods, which is a primary theme of the exhibition. The discussion will be moderated by Natalie Moore, WBEZ South Side reporter and author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation. Panelists include exhibiting artists Carlos Javier Ortiz and David Schalliol, artist Tonika Johnson, archivist Lucy Baird, and community activist Deborah Payne. The event is free and open to the public.
Chicago Stories is curated by MoCP curator of academic programs and collections Kristin Taylor.
