Weinberg/Newton Gallery (688 N. Milwaukee Ave.), a non-commercial gallery dedicated to promoting social justice causes, is partnering with Mercy Housing Lakefront to present Key Change. Addressing the present-day housing crisis, Key Change will feature works by Gabrielle Garland, Tonika Lewis Johnson, Maymay Jumsai, Riff Studio and South Side Home Movie Project. Key Change is curated by Weinberg/Newton Gallery Director Nabiha Khan-Giordano and is presented in collaboration with Mercy Housing Lakefront. The exhibition will run from April 29 to July 16, 2022.
Spanning painting, collage, sculpture, video and large-scale installation, Key Change addresses the contested history of housing practices while also proposing alternative ways of urban living, specifically in the context of Chicago. The exhibition offers a range of interpretations by contemporary artists, activists and architects. With photographic and painted depictions of homes, the exhibition initially positions housing as a place that can be abandoned and oftentimes, unjustly stolen. Architectural collages demonstrate housing as a temporal exercise in which various influences and precedents engage in dialogue with future possibilities. Silent home movies and idiosyncratic sculpture subsequently suggest that housing is a productive place in which intimate moments, lifelong memories and nurturing meals are created and shared.
“Our communities are deeply dependent on meeting individual housing needs—an essential human right. Like most other private ventures, there is a tremendous amount of asymmetry in private housing, and it is this very unevenness—as it presents itself both in appearance and in practice, that many of the participants in the exhibition are compelled to represent,” says Nabiha Khan-Giordano. “Our partner, Mercy Housing Lakefront, is an outstanding example of how to create individual housing solutions while producing opportunities for greater involvement, participation, and agency within an immediate community.”
Isabel Strauss, Plan, 2020, digital collage print, 15 x 15 inches.
Featured Works
The artists in Key Change explore themes of housing and the domestic as it relates to “community,” questioning how current housing practices and various structures and systems in place influence one’s sense of belonging and security.
In the work of Gabrielle Garland, “home” as a subject matter is taken quite literally. Richly colored paintings of boarded-up and abandoned homes in suburban settings depicted against skies in varying hues present visions of structures both still and animated. Warped forms and wonky perspectives further create a destabilizing effect, alluding to the subjective, but also shifting and transient nature of “home.”
Tonika Lewis Johnson’s recent project Inequity for Sale, investigates the long history of abusive housing practices on Chicago’s South and West side, specifically targeting residents of historically Black communities. Through photography, archival sound recordings, data-driven mapping, large-scale installation and strategically placed sculptural landmarkers, Inequity for Sale sheds light on unjust land sale contracts and racist housing policies. Individual contract addresses and accompanying personal testimonies reveal the history and impact of these criminal housing practices.
Maymay Jumsai’s artistic practice often encompasses both traditional media as well as interactive and experiential components. For her contribution to the exhibition, visitors will experience the familiar smell of baking upon entering the gallery space. Bread-making machines placed in the back of the gallery continuously produce loaves for consumption. The vibrating machines, in close proximity to one another, create a constant hum. During the installation, the machines may appear to get closer to each other, then further away, then repeat—almost always touching, but never completely in contact. Jumsai’s work explores themes of the domestic and the subtle inflections of personal history and experience that shape one’s notion of “home.”
Riff Studio’s Architecture for Reparations is an ongoing request for proposals that solicit responses to reimagine vacant land in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. For the exhibition, the request and proposals are presented in a book format that visitors can flip through to gain inspiration while planning their own response. To date, designers have confronted vacancy, displacement, disinvestment and alienation in response to Riff Studio's request.
Isabel Strauss of Riff Studio presents her own response to the RFP in the form of strikingly dynamic digital collages. Drawing heavily on multiple artistic and cultural influences, Strauss’s collages place pre-existing imagery on top of architectural renderings to redefine spatial relationships between bodies and objects, histories and futures.
Southside Home Movie Project, an organization devoted to collecting, preserving, digitizing, researching and screening home movies by Chicago’s South Side residents, will screen a compilation of silent film footage depicting celebratory moments of domestic life. Offering a portal into the lives and histories of others, the films establish an emotional ground on which to consider occupied (rather than abandoned) home life and the positive experiences built upon it.
Hours and Appointments
Gallery Hours:
Thursday & Friday: 1-5pm
Saturday: 12-4pm
Reservations can be made via Tock, here, and are limited to 30-minute time slots with a maximum of 10 guests per time slot. Small educational groups and classes are welcome for guided tours which are available upon request.
If you would like to come in for an evening appointment, or an appointment outside of our gallery hours, please email info@weinbergnewtongallery.com.
Visitor and COVID-19 Policies
More information regarding Weinberg/Newton Gallery’s visitor policies, appointment scheduling, current COVID-19 precautions and safety protocol can be found here.
About Mercy Housing Lakefront
Mercy Housing Lakefront’s mission is to create stable, vibrant, and healthy communities by developing, financing, and operating affordable, program-enriched housing for families, seniors, and people with special needs who lack the economic resources to access quality, safe housing opportunities. Founded in 1986, Mercy Housing Lakefront is the largest nonprofit provider of service-enriched housing in the Great Lakes region. We are proud to own and operate 52 properties with more than 5,500 units serving more than 8,000 residents in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. We remain committed to changing lives and revitalizing neighborhoods by providing safe, quality, affordable housing and supportive social services.
About Weinberg/Newton Gallery
Weinberg/Newton Gallery is a non-commercial gallery with a mission to collaborate with nonprofit organizations and artists to educate and engage the public on social justice issues. Through artwork and programming, the gallery provides a vital space for open discourse on critical contemporary issues facing our communities. Connecting artists with social justice organizations, we work to drive change and cultivate a culture of consciousness.
History of Weinberg/Newton Gallery
In 2016, David Weinberg Photography became Weinberg/Newton Gallery. The change reflected the values of The Weinberg/Newton Gallery Family Foundation, which has been led jointly by David Weinberg and Jerry Newton since 2009.