Chicago Project artist David Schalliol will have work on view at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in the exhibition Chicago Stories: Carlos Javier Ortiz and David Schalliol from April 11 – July 7, 2019.

In response to Birmingham, Alabama, 1963: Dawoud Bey/Black Star, the exhibition will feature photographs and films by David Schalliol along with Carlos Javier Ortiz, whose practices both explore forms of systemic racism in Chicago and beyond through the lens of individual stories.

Long interested in the abandonment and dereliction of residential structures, sociologist and photographer David Schalliol (American, b. 1976) questions the ever-changing urban landscape as it relates to larger race and class inequities. His feature-length film, The Area (2018), follows a community activist, Deborah Payne, as she fights a multi-billion-dollar intermodal freight company in its quest to buy and demolish over 400 homes owned by African American families in her Chicago neighborhood of Englewood. The film is paired with Schalliol’s images of lone buildings centered between vacant lots, appearing as shrines to disappearing neighborhoods. “Instead of seeing one peculiar building, we see the legacy and immediacy of urban transformation,” says Schalliol.  “Instead of asking ‘What happened to this house?’ we ask, ‘What is causing this phenomenon?’” (MoCP)

The Chicago Project is an online gallery presented by Catherine Edelman Gallery devoted to new and established photographers in the Chicago area who we feel deserve recognition. Submissions guidelines can be found here.

[Featured Image: David Schalliol, Isolated Building Study 24, 2008]