Philosophy
Neighborhood: Bronzeville
Racial Justice Issue: Divestment of Black Communities on Southside
Through this fellowship, Chandra seeks to address disinvestment: systemic neglect and removal of resources from Black neighborhoods, particularly within Bronzeville. Her work seeks to ask how can we heal from a process as normalized and sprawling as disinvestment. Her intention is to trace and represent disinvestment as a series of moments in reverse — and in slow motion — to make strange what has for many of us become familiar commentary like ”there goes the neighborhood”: the traumatic, rapid but also long process of disinvestment. Her work is about collectively imagining futures, prospectively looking forward to denormalize this process and centering a space for, and an ongoing conversation regarding, what would be our ideal expression and realization of community, healing and spatial agency and imaginary. Her project will engage her community through a series of pop-up design investigations to inspire the creative agency of community members, to build a spatial imaginary and engender transhistorical solidarity.
BIO
Based in Bronzeville, Chandra Christmas-Rouse is an urban planner and data artist. Her creative practice focuses on building spatial imaginaries and interventions as a way to inform dialogue and development in cities and to engage the socio-political realities of disinvestment. Her most recent works were about Black women’s spatial sensibility and the city, broaching interferences among spatial production theory and black feminist theories as a means to transform urban redevelopment in Chicago.
Threewalls is always finding new ways to share our artist’s unique voices through exhibits, talks, and gatherings. We would like you to be the first to know about these opportunities.