These Grand Places
Tomiko Jones
September 4-November 20, 2026
Opening Reception: September 4, 6-9pm
Free and open to the public
Aurora PhotoCenter, Main Gallery
1125 Brookside Avenue, Suite C9, Indianapolis
These Grand Places by artist Tomiko Jones began in 2017 when she saw a list of federally protected public land to be reviewed for de-regulation during the first Trump administration. At sites spanning Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and California, Jones immersed herself in these vulnerable landscapes to consider how the concepts of public land and national identity relate to each other — who belongs, what land is viewed as worthy of protection, and how politics and power shape America’s physical and social environment.
Working in some of the Southwest’s most striking landscapes, many of the images in These Grand Places take a long view to celebrate the natural beauty of the land. Her work also documents what is slipping away to extraction and marks what is lost when the land is valued more as a commercial asset than a irreplaceable treasure for our and future generations.
Often throughout These Grand Places, Jones appears between the lens and the landscape, conduit and actor in both her personal and the national biography; in these images, Jones connects with, remembers, and guards the ground she stands on. Ultimately, as the artist records her personal relationship to the land, These Grand Places asks us to consider our collective human ties and stewardship to this place we call home, and to each other.
From September 4-October 23, 2026, a companion exhibition of Jones’ Field Table will be on view in Aurora’s Efroymson Gallery. Continuing her immersive, site-specific engagement to place, Jones will visit Indianapolis late September 2026 to create new work in and around the city that will added to the exhibition and Field Table as it is completed. Jones will be present in the gallery for questions and conversation for First Friday, October 2, 2026.
Tomiko Jones’ photography and multidisciplinary installations explore social, cultural and geopolitical transitions, considering the twin crises of too much and too little in the age of climate change. Jones was awarded a 2025 Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grant for the socially engaged project These Grand Places, to be presented in a traveling mobile gallery with pop‑up exhibitions in fall 2026. She received the Grand Challenge Seed Grant from the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education (2019-2022) to develop These Grand Places, a photographic project on public land. She is the recipient of awards including the En Foco New Works Fellowship (New York, 2014), 4Culture and City Artists (Seattle, 2010), and Pépinières Européennes pour Jeunes Artistes (France, 2008). She was an invited resident artist at Museé Niépce in Chalon-Sur-Saône, France (2008), and selected for a project-specific Fellowship at The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France (2009).
Jones received her MFA and Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Arizona, Tucson, where she studied with Professors Sama Alshaibi and Frank Gohlke. She was formerly Associate Professor of Art at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Vilas Professorship, Early-Career Investigator Award (2024-27). Her professional experience includes a Visiting Artist and Curator-in-Residence position at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, Assistant Professor and Photography Program Coordinator at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Mendocino College, New Mexico State University and Drury University Summer Institute for Visual Arts.
Annual operating support for Aurora PhotoCenter provided by the City of Indianapolis through the Indy Arts Council. Additional annual support provided by the Efroymson Family Fund, Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Inc., Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, Indiana Arts Commission, Aurora Members, and donors who believe in Aurora’s mission.