Notes for a People's Atlas

Chicago, IL
Pop. 2,695,598Chicago is a city in the state of Illinois with a major metropolitan area that is the third largest in the United States. The area was occupied by indigenous people until the late 18th Century when it was turned over to the States as a military post. It emerged as a transportation hub in the second half of the 19th Century due to its prime location on the Great Lakes and as a midwestern state. Immigration to Chicago at the end of the 1800s made it one of the fastest growing cities in world history and required more infrastructure development, including public sanitation and municipal parks. After a great fire destroyed a third of the city in 1871, much of Chicago had to be rebuilt, leading to large-scale development projects and many labor conflicts that ensued. The 20th Century Chicago is what we associate with the city today: sky scrapers, gangland, city planning, machine politics, protests. Mayor Richard J. Daley took office in the 1950s and caused many structural changes in the city as well as constructed many of the city landmarks that we are familiar with today. His son, Richard M. Daley, followed suit ruling the city 1989-2011. Within the tenure of both Daleys, city neighborhoods remained extremely segregated, with African Americans in the south and far west, Caucasians along the lakefront and north neighborhoods, and Hispanics settling southwest of the loop. This coincides with the spread of condominiums westward from the lake and into the north side with some spots in the loop and in Hyde Park in the south. Neighborhoods like Wicker Park in the northwest that used to be the working class have been greatly gentrified since the mid-1990s. Chicago experienced a trend towards neoliberalism, exemplified by the privatizing of public amenities under the Richard M. Daley administration.●      Project Dates: 2005-Present (For further information see Euan Hague’s essay on the Chicago NPA maps and this Flickr page for other maps from Chicago)

Exhibitions (in Chicago unless otherwise noted):
●      Entorno at Polvo Gallery from April 28 – May 20, 2006
●      Pass it On! Connecting Contemporay DIY Cultures at Columbia College Chicago’s A & D Gallery from March 1-April 14, 2007
●      Pedagogical Factory at Hyde Park Art Center from July 22 – September 23, 2007
●      An Atlas of Radical Cartography at Gallery 400, at the University of Illinois Chicago from November 27, 2007- January 19, 2008
●      Around the Coyote at Wicker Park Field House from January 15 – January 18, 2009
●      The Synesthetic Plan of Chicago: A Multi-Sensory Journey Through Chicago and Its Neighborhoods at Chicago Cultural Center from June 1 – October 9, 2009
●      Transductores at Centro José Guerrero (Granada, Spain) from December 3, 2009 – February 14th, 2010
●      TRANSDUCTORES at ACVic. Centre d’Arts Contemporànies from October 1st-November 23 2010
●      You’re Pushing Too Hard at Chicago Art Department from January 14th-22nd, 2011
●      TRANS LAB – Pedagogical Laboratory at Sala Amárica (Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain) From April 1st-May 29th, 2011

• The Urban Imaginarium at The Untitled Gallery @ Marwen (Chicago, IL) August 5 – September 19, 2011