Madeline McMillian
2026 Aurora Workspace Residency
Madeline McMillian plans to devote her Aurora Workspace Residency to refining prints of images from her series, Appalachian Dreamscapes. McMillian has lived in Kentucky her entire life, where she was shaped by the Bluegrass and Appalachian regions that surround her, along with the history, resilience, and generational stories that she experienced there.
McMillian writes, “My practice is rooted in photography as a way of navigating memory and identity. Much of my childhood exists only in fragments, shaped not only by my own recollections but by stories, images, and silences passed down. Growing up in Kentucky, my understanding of self has been formed through generational lineage, where personal history and collective memory are deeply intertwined. I am interested in how memory and identity continuously inform one another, and how revisiting both personal and familial pasts reshapes our perception of who we are in the present.”
During her Aurora Workspace Residency, McMillian will experiment with printing on different substrates, including silk, while also focusing on color grading and producing cohesive, large-scale prints that strengthen the series’ visual language.
Madelene McMillian earned her Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Psychology from the University of Kentucky in 2025. Working primarily with photography, her practice explores themes of memory, identity, and place, often drawing from personal archives. McMillian has exhibited her work in both solo and group exhibitions, including at the Robert C. May Gallery at the University of Kentucky, LexArts Gallery, and the Lexington Art League as part of PRHBTN 13 and 14. In 2024, she presented a solo exhibition through the Emerging Visions Series at Paris Photo Gallery. In addition to her fine art practice, McMillian works in editorial photography and currently serves as the Lead Photographer and Photo Editor for TITLE Magazine.
This project is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Aurora Workspace Residency would not be possible without the following partnership: Pending scheduling, the resident will stay at CAMi in their artist bed and breakfast located on Cruft Street in the Garfield Park area of Indianapolis. Aurora PhotoCenter thanks CAMi for its generous support of this residency.
