Continuing with its mission to support and acknowledge Black cultural agents of change within the community, the Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) has announced the winners of its inaugural Black Reconstruction Collective Prize. Made possible with support from the Mellon Foundation, the BRC recognizes Chicago-based photographer/social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson and Bronx-based architect, historian, and theorist Ife Salema Vanable as this year's winners.

"This prize was created by the founders of the Black Reconstruction Collective as a way to launch the organization as a funder and support system for Black creatives," shares the BRC. Both will receive an unrestricted monetary prize of $5,000, allowing them to use the funds to carry out their design pursuits as they see fit. Newly appointed BRC Collaborative Manager Michelle Lisa Polissaint writes, "Ife and Tonika exemplify the mission of the Black Reconstructive Collective & I'm so excited to spend the next year working with them both and providing support." 

Learn more about the 2022 BCR Prize Awardees and examples of their work below.

Tonika Lewis Johnson

NOTICE: Inequity for Sale - recording of public hearing led by Tonika Lewis Johnson on June 2, 2021 discussing the launch of the project.

Tonika Lewis Johnson is a photographer/social justice artist and life-long resident of Chicago’s South Side neighborhood of Englewood. She is also co-founder of two community-based organizations, Englewood Arts Collective and Resident Association of Greater Englewood, that mobilize people and resources for positive change in Greater Englewood.

She plans to use these funds to directly support her ongoing project Inequity for Sale which explores the legalized theft of homes and the effects it has had on Black communities. In the 50s and 60s, using Land Sale Contracts, properties and income were stolen from aspiring Black homeowners by predatory lenders and has directly contributed to inequity in present-day Black communities. Inequity for Sale includes land markers and an archival website with documentation of the homes and stories of residents, a podcast, and virtual walking tour that connects this history with present-day conditions.

Ife Salema Vanable

IFE VANABLE | DEEP SEGREGATION from IFE VANABLE on Vimeo.

Ife Salema Vanable is a seeker, interested in tales, histories, theories, and architectures; their formations and tellings. Ife directs i/van/able, a Bronx-based architectural workshop and think tank producing theoretical, speculative, and physical interventions that defy prevailing notions of type, taste and form. As an architectural historian at the end of her PhD program at Columbia University, Ife Vanable’s practice is deeply rooted in her research.

As an architectural historian at the end of her PhD program at Columbia University, Ife Vanable’s practice is deeply rooted in her research. These funds will allow her to begin applying her research around interior spaces as a site of convening and entangled interior geographies into physical objects and writing. Vanable’s upcoming projects will expand her research based work into a tangible spatial practice.

After the group's founding board members met in 2019 to discuss their plans for an upcoming exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, they've built a collective that the architecture community and those outside the industry cannot and should not overlook. Their powerfully investigative exhibition at MoMA and continued efforts as a group show the importance of paying homage and attention to Black architects and designers whose influence continues to shape the industry's past, present, and future. 

The BRC shares that while operating as a remote organization, they plan to work alongside Johnson and Vanable by hosting programs in their respective cities. "The first round of prizes were selected through an internal nomination process." The BRC adds that they will conduct an open call for nominations followed by internal reviews in the future.

Learn more about previous Black Reconstruction Collective coverage on Archinect here.