Promise (for tomorrow from the past looking to the future)
Folayemi (Fo) Wilson / blkHaUS Studios
Vitreous glass mosaic
2024, City of Chicago Public Art Collection
This artwork considers the 19th-century migration of the various racial and ethnic groups moving in and out of Chicago’s Near West Side. Included are images from local archives and reference Hull House Maps and Papers which compiled data on the area's social and working conditions collected through the pioneering work of Florence Kelley (1859-1932). The report published color-coded maps according to wage distribution, race, and ethnicity, on a block-by-block basis. The colors represented in the 19th-century report are used in this 21st-century artwork to represent the various peoples that contributed to the history and culture of the Near West Side. The artwork asks: What is over the horizon of the Midwestern prairie? What new Near West Side might the group of young people be walking towards? What future Chicago might the Greenline take them to?
Folayemi (Fo) Wilson is an artist/designer, educator, independent curator and writer. Her art practice crosses interdisciplinary boundaries between the visual arts, sonic media, a regard for the handmade, and a background in design and object making. Her work celebrates the Black imagination as a technology of resistance and self-determination. Wilson earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Furniture Design with a concentration in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the Rhode Island School of Design.
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