Students Selected for Atkin Residency in the Art of Democracy

Two Sam Fox School students — Madison Brown, BFA ’25, and Atalaya Magdalena, BFA ’25 — have been selected for the inaugural Atkin Residency in the Art of Democracy through WashU’s Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement.

Drawing on the rich tradition of the arts as a catalyst for social change, the residency supports undergraduate student artists creating a significant work that investigates the paradoxes, evolutions, histories, stories, and possibilities of U.S. democracy. Brown and Magdalena will each receive a $10,000 stipend to offset living costs and to support learning and making.

Brown, who is also the Mosbacher St. Louis fellow, plans to explore the history of LGBTQ+ organizing in St. Louis through printmaking and banner making. “I have seen how the democratic process impacts people’s everyday lives, both positively and negatively,” they shared. “I have witnessed how queer people responded to…legislation and affected change. I see these responses as a necessary function of democracy. With the residency, I hope to celebrate themes of popular resistance, organizing, and imagination — all of which complicate our modern political landscape. I want my project to interrogate the relationship between marginalization and citizenship.”

Magdalena will investigate the intersection of food and democracy through food shares, participatory mobile murals, and documentary film. “In my artwork, I understand the human body to be the site in which the social occurs, reproduces, and changes. Bodies are geographically located, and arranged into social relationships, by history. History is written to consolidate the living movement of bodies into nations and periods,” she shared. “On this continent, the process of colonization, immigration, and nationhood have all been premised on mass movements of people. Some voluntary and some coerced. What does democracy look like as a physical, social behavior? What are the sensory dimensions of democracy?”

The residency officially begins in August, with both students expected to work 10-15 hours per week on their project through April 2025. Each will have regular mentor and staff check-ins — including with Senior Lecturers Sage Dawson and John Early — a formal critique, and will plan and implement a public event or other engagement to share their work and foster discourse.