Amplifier's Community Vaccination Art Program encourages vaccinations in areas with lower rates

Commissioned to create a Chicago mural promoting COVID-19 vaccinations, artist Katie Chung thought of the Al Green song, “Let’s Stay Together,” and depicted collective experiences that disappear under quarantine.

The Art Institute lion, the Navy Pier Ferris wheel and a hot dog are all included in her mural at 32nd and Hoyne in the McKinley Park neighborhood.

“I was also thinking that whether you agree with the vaccine or not, if we don’t solve it together, we will lose access to all the things on my artwork…the things we enjoy as a city, but that go away when viruses happen, when we do not want to get vaccinated, and the virus keeps spreading,” Chung said. “The words I chose to say were, ‘let’s get vaccinated’, something very simple and straightforward and not too demanding.”

A QR code on the mural will allow people to access information about COVID-19 vaccinations at will. Chung’s artwork is part of a multi-city partnership between the nonprofit design lab Amplifier, which builds art and media experiments to “amplify” the most important movements of their time, and Facebook Open Arts, which will spread the message through digital social media.

The Amplifier-Facebook Open Arts campaign is using public art this summer and fall to inspire people in communities with lower vaccination rates to get the vaccine. The campaign will encompass 12 cities across the United States and Canada: Chicago, Detroit, Edmonton, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Mesa, Montreal, Ottawa, San Bernardino, San Antonio, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Chosen artists have roots in the cities and were asked to emphasize community, trust, the value of vaccination, education, and access.

Gabby Gonzales (Los Angeles, CA) is a trained artist whose work currently focuses on LGBTQ themes, including what it’s like to be a queer woman today. She describes her work as being “heavy in symbolism” and perhaps a bit melancholy as she looks at subjects like longing and desire. The message of her mural in Los Angeles is “Protect the Ones You Love.”

Chung is a graduate of Lane Tech and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been resident printmaking artist at Lillstreet Art Center; a member of Candor Arts, a Chicago-based resource for artist books; a participant in the Center Program at Hyde Park Art Center and the recipient of the IAP grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

Another two murals in Englewood will be done by Brandon Breaux, known as the artist behind all three of Chance the Rapper’s iconic album covers.

Chung, who was Facebook Inc. Artist in Residence last year, is a native Chicagoan who has always lived here. “That’s why it was awesome to be part of this project. I love this city and want to see it thrive, not go through quarantine again. It was a pretty depressing time.”

Just before the lockdown, Chung was working on her first project with Facebook, a mural at the entrance of its new offices. As the office faced a shutdown, her two weeks on the project were whittled down to one week of 12-hour days. “I was just in a bubble.”

Then, when she went to the grocery store and saw the empty shelves, she felt the enormity of the virus and the office shutdown.

The COVID-19 mural process was interesting for Chung because her art has mostly been personal, exploring what it means to be a first-generation Korean-American, simultaneously explaining her history and fitting in with the public. For the Amplifier-Facebook project, however, she had to analyze what was Alt-J going on around her. “How do I engage with an audience that doesn’t want to engage? How do I want my art to interact with the public on a sensitive subject?

“I was really drawn to this project because I am a full supporter of the vaccine, a supporter of science. Throughout this year and last year, I’ve seen the country divided. It’s amazing I got to use my art for something I believe in, and also inviting to people who are suspicious or a little scared of the vaccine. I understand that at the outbreak, we were not under the best leadership and there was a lot of false information. I am grateful for this opportunity to share a different approach of looking at this vaccine.”

Katie Chung (Chicago, IL) is a Korean-American visual artist from Chicago. Her artistic media usually include drawing, print, and sculpture. She combines her identity and heritage to create art representing labor and immigration. Chung has been a recipient of the IAP D-CASE Cultural Grant and has been featured in the Chicago Artist Coalition. Her art for the COVID-19 vaccine depicts two people hugging each other and smiling as things start to return to the way they were before CO- VID. Currently in Chicago, only 57% of residents are fully vaccinated (Chicago. gov). Mayor Lori Lightfoot is encouraging residents to get vaccinated to protect those around them. Katie poses in front of a billboard displaying her work (photo courtesy of Katie Chung).

Murals in Englewood (6310 S. Halsted St.) and West Englewood (64th Street and Ashland Avenue) are an opportunity to get the community working together, said Rodney Johnson, president of One Health Englewood, which he founded in 2016 and which is focused on health literacy, health advocacy, health promotion and research. Johnson came to the Amplifier Facebook project at the recommendation of Teamwork Englewood, having worked on its community quality of life plan years ago.

Johnson also had early success getting people to share a link for Protect Chicago Plus, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s program focused on the 13 lowest vaccinated communities. On February 6, 4.6 percent of the Englewood population, and 4.4 percent of the West Englewood population, had received at least one dose of the vaccine; by May 8, the rates were 34.9 percent and 36.6 percent, respectively. This summer, the City added door-to-door canvassing.

Johnson coordinated two or three vaccine events a month in the southwest corner of Englewood and in West Englewood. Armed with a master’s degree in public health from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a master’s in social sector leadership from the University of Chicago, he also sought to develop relationships with organizations to better understand the community.

Rachelle Baker (Detroit, MI) is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Detroit, who works in illustration, graphic design and relief printing as well as video art and music. Her work has been seen in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and Marie Claire magazine. She has also contributed illustrations to many books, including “Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream,” “Stamped,” “Stamped (for Kids)” and “Motherlode: 100 + Women Who Made Hip-Hop.” Her COVID-19 art encourages people to get vaccinated in order to protect others.

Because there is so much trauma in the community, “people stick to their own and often don’t engage as much as they should,” Johnson said. Young people are hard to reach, not just in terms of COVID-19.

“Young people have complicated lives, especially young parents trying to raise a family with jobs that are not familyfriendly,” such as retail, which does often give an opportunity for more education, he said.

Seeing the city open up again after Memorial Day also played into vaccine hesitancy, he said. Diabetes and cancer develop over time, so if you are not sick enough to go to the emergency room, if COVID isn’t immediately affecting you, it’s not as important to you as it is to those who are aware of its effects.

Jared Yazzie (Mesa, AZ) is a self-taught graphic designer and printmaker. He is the owner of OXDX, a fashion label featuring designs that “properly represent Native people” and artwork that “brings to light indigenous issues.” Yazzie’s COVID-19 artwork, appearing in Los Angeles and Mesa, is inspired by his family members and his Navajo heritage with a message to get vaccinated to protect loved ones.

“Then, a lot of media have been antivaccine for political reasons,” he said. “People hear that and go to things that have happened to our community; that builds on the stigma as well.”

Johnson has coordinated block club parties at the intersections of 73rd and 79th Streets with Ashland Avenue, using a bus that was highly visible. “We upgraded the food, because people remember food and will engage more when the food is better. They know the difference between a hot dog and a bratwurst. And word of mouth. And incentives. People are getting the vaccine more because of the incentives.”

Deciding to get the vaccine can be a snap decision. “Their friends have it done and everyone starts getting it done. It feels familiar.”

Johnson coordinated a vaccination event Saturday, October 2, at 59th and Wood Streets that drew 50 people. Partner organizations included CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort) Chicago, The Blessed Child, Voices of West Englewood, and Growing Home.

“I hate to say it was [the] convincing [factor], but the incentives help,” said Anthony Hilton, executive director of CORE Chicago, which has partnered with the city to get the vaccination rate to 77 percent in each of its 77 neighborhoods. The City of Chicago provided a $50 debit card to everyone who received the first Pfizer shot and $100 to everyone who received the Johnson & Johnson single shot. They also provided Uber rides to and from the vaccination event and to the grocery store.

Some people have hesitated because they say the vaccine was approved too quickly, Hilton said. CORE, which was founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee in 2010 after the Haiti earthquake and which is partnering with Los Angeles, New Orleans and other cities on CO- VID-19 vaccinations, is trying to dispel those myths. “We’re trying to explain it will not hurt you, it’s not some government thing to keep track of you, but just to make sure we’re all safe. We can get back to normal, stop wearing masks.”

Dwayne Harris of The Blessed Child said they promoted the event on Facebook as the first of many pop-ups, an opportunity to access young men and women prone to violence via their parents. The Blessed Child brought a range of gifts to show that people didn’t have to go across town to shop, and also the power of community.

The Blessed Child distributes incentive gifts during a vaccine sign-up event on October 2 in West Englewood

Courtesy photo

Johnnie Brown, supervisor of The Blessed Child’s violence prevention program, said their violence interruption outreach will involve pop-ups, mediations and anger management “to get our high-risk individuals in another direction other than violence.”

Harris said both he and his wife, LaTonya, have been vaccinated, but he has lost a brother, a brother-in-law and several friends to COVID-19. “At the end of the day, it’s killing us in record numbers, so we have to get that shot in order to survive. It’s important that we be involved with anyone getting these shots out so we can get back to normalcy.”

Shyama Kuver (Washington, D.C.) is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist whose work is inspired by her queer and Indo-Fijian identities. Her artistic style reflects the multicultural, spiritual and experiential contexts that have shaped her life and career. Kuver’s work has appeared in The Washingtonian, NYU Press, Columbia University Press and Teen Vogue, among others. The message of her colorful billboard, featuring many different hands, is “Choose Community Care.” Her goal was to create imagery that does not make the viewer feel wrong, but rather, communicates that it is within their power to help themselves and their community.

The reason many people delayed getting the shots, said bystander Renard Williams, is that people were on their own and in their own world, the kind of people who wear hot pants in a snowfall because they don’t listen to weather forecasts.

There was also a mistrust of government suddenly wanting to help, Williams said. “When I really needed you, you weren’t there. You didn’t even want to talk to me before the vaccine. Is that the way you want to communicate with me, through the vaccine?”

Still, it came down to personal contact. Williams works 12 hours a day, but helped out with the vaccination day because Gloria Williams, executive director of Voices of West Englewood, is like family to him and he wanted to bring people through the event.

“We’ve got to understand, this will save lives,” said yet another bystander. “If we don’t stop it, it will get worse. It’s going to take a lot more people.”

Rue Oliver (Seattle, WA) is a self-described “queer trans artist and poet” who creates work focusing on the wisdom and healing that queer bodies carry. Their work includes portraits, medical illustrations, trans-inclusive medical illustrations and brand/marketing design. Oliver created a mural which can be seen in Seattle, encouraging vaccination and featuring families of all types with the message “Together We Can Find Our Way.”

Gloria Williams is working with Johnson on the West Englewood mural, which she said will be about vaccinations and the generations of people who have lived in the neighborhood. Her organization regularly provides a lot of information on taxes and the housing crisis. Right now, she is focusing on abandoned properties, so that residents can obtain them at a cheaper price and move back into the neighborhood. Over the summer, she picked out a block with five abandoned properties through the Cook County Land Bank, and cleaned them up so that everyone could see their value.

Many community organizations have been doing good work, but the COV- ID-19 crisis has brought them together, Johnson said. His hope is that they will build a culture of civic engagement to improve the community.

“I look at it from a long-term point of view, but also ask why these things are so systemic in the community. Once COVID gets solved, what’s next?”

By Suzanne Hanney, artist stories by Paige Bialik, Fran Johns contributing