Twenty-two individuals from across the world have been named the 2025 MacArthur Fellows. Among them is Tonika Lewis Johnson, a Chicago-based photographer and social justice artist.
Since 1981, the MacArthur Foundation has celebrated individuals with “exceptional creativity” with this fellowship award (known as the “genius grants”). 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.
Hailing from the South Side’s Englewood neighborhood in Chicago, Johnson’s 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’s neighborhoods.
“I create participatory art projects that help people understand and see systemic inequities, but also create pathways for them to disrupt them,” says Johnson in an interview with the MacArthur Foundation.
One of her most well-known projects, Folded Map (2018–ongoing), explores how Chicago’s grid tells a story of segregation. Johnson pairs up “map twins”—people who live at the same address number on the North and South Sides—and photographs them at home.
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.
“It offers you a new way to think about these issues, because if segregation was engineered, then it also can be engineered for repair,” she says.
Over time, Folded Map has grown beyond photographs into a short film, a school curriculum, and an action kit—all tools to spark understanding across the city’s divides.
Her latest project, UnBlocked Englewood (2023–ongoing), has repaired over a dozen homes as part of an effort to revitalize a city block in one of Chicago’s most disinvested areas.
“The project demonstrates how helping a specific block heal through home repairs, beautification of the block, is art in and of itself,” she explains.
The project, a collaboration with the Chicago Bungalow Association and the city’s 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.
“I want my projects to help people feel confident that learning, listening, and going across divides is really a pathway to healing,” says Johnson.