Atrium Project: Edie Fake

Runs through March 29, 2026

For this iteration of the Atrium Project series, artist, author, and activist Edie Fake transforms the two-story lobby wall in the museum’s second floor atrium with his mural The Free Clinic for Gender Affirming Care (2024–25). An imagined facade of a clinic for free transgender healthcare, the mural offers a majestic counterview to the present reality in the United States, where transgender and nonbinary people are under constant threat of political repression, restriction, and scapegoating. The mural, with its layered architectural motifs and undulating prismatic colors, invites visitors into Fake’s utopian vision of access and open expression.

Following his earlier Memory Palace series—examples of which are included in the exhibition City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago, on view at the MCA from July 5, 2025, through May 31, 2026—wherein Fake reimagined the facades of historic queer and feminist establishments in Chicago, this work underscores the artist’s shift in focus from the past to the future, from what was to what could still be.

Atrium Project: Edie Fake is organized by Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator.