RIVER NORTH — “Home” is a vital concept for everyone — a place where people feel safe and secure, where they can always return to and be surrounded by belongings and perhaps family, friends and pets.
“Evicted” at the National Public Housing Museum, 625 N. Kingsbury St., explores the trauma that occurs when people are ejected from their homes.
Produced by Brooklyn-based firms MATTER, MGMT and Unfurl Productions, the exhibit was held at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and has traveled nationally across Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states.
“Evicted” opened here last week in a partnership between the Public Housing Museum and ART WORKS Projects, we all live here, Red Line Service and the Chicago Housing Justice League and runs until March 10. An opening reception is 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday; wine and light refreshments will be served. You can RSVP on the museum website.
“Evicted” uses first- and second-hand references such as photographs, videotaped interviews, artifacts and statistics to share the unfiltered truth of America’s eviction crisis. Inspired by Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” the exhibit treats the eviction crisis as a humanitarian and social justice issue.
Exhibition infographics help the viewer process comprehensive data. For example, eviction filings by state were turned into brown moving boxes of different sizes, labeled with the state and the number of filings there.
In another display, keys are arranged into two rectangles. Each yellow key represents one eviction. The text below one matrix says, “1 in 5 Black women,” while the other says: “1 in 15 white women.”
“Since August 2022, more than 35,000 individuals seeking asylum and a place to call home have arrived in Chicago, with the influx continuing even amid winter conditions that jeopardize people’s lives, and last year alone, over 6,000 Chicagoans experienced houselessness,” Lisa Yun Lee, National Public Housing Museum executive director, said in a news release. “Amplifying the urgency of housing insecurity that faces all people and fostering dialogue around these critical issues is particularly important for our city now.”
The exhibit aims to remove stereotypical stigmas surrounding eviction, creating a space for meaningful dialogue about housing insecurity. Photos on display captured evicted individuals standing by their belongings piled outside of their former homes. A video documentary allows the audience to hear directly from the evicted. Three staff educators will engage with visitors to share their professional insights and personal experiences with housing insecurity.
“All these families [shown in the exhibition] may essentially be people who we see [as having] made ‘bad choices.’ The exhibition tries to show that the bad choices did not lead to their poverty. Instead, poverty was the reason they made these bad choices,” Lee said.
“Evicted” is the Public Housing Museum’s final exhibit at its home on Kingsbury Street. The museum is scheduled to relocate to 1322 W. Taylor St., the last remaining building of the 1930s WPA-era Jane Addams Homes as the organization’s new permanent home in Little Italy later this year.
“I’ve always wanted to bring the exhibition to Chicago. Eviction is not an us-them, tenant-landlord situation. Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance did some of the best work by building alliances with landlords. And this exhibition is about the idea of home. Everyone needs a place to call home,” Lee said.
“Evicted” will be on view noon-6 p.m. Thursday- Friday and noon-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday until March 10.
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