“This is Home: Preserving Queer Families in Indianapolis” is a deeply collaborative, immersive exhibition that documents and celebrates the soft, everyday magic of queer family life in Indianapolis. Led by queer artists and spouses, Jasmine and Brit Indwell of Jasmine Tafoya Photo, the project seeks to archive, uplift, and expand how queer families are seen— and how they see themselves—through intimate portraiture, immersive design, and co-created storytelling. 

Jasmine Tafoya Photo collaborated with six LGBTQIA+ families across the city, utilizing photography, candid conversations, and installation set design to honor their domestic lives—not as spectacle, but as sacred. Whether multigenerational households, chosen kinship networks, or queer parents raising children (human or pet), queer families are inherently creative stewards of life.

The objectives of “This is Home” are to:

* Preserve the soft, everyday magic of queer family life in Indianapolis;

* Offer collaborative, care-based representation rooted in respect and consent;

* Expand understanding of what of it means to be family– challenging narrow, heteronormative narratives;

* Ensure accessibility, creating multiple pathways to deepen the audience experience, both in-gallery and online.

“’Queer’ not as being about who you’re having sex with; but ‘queer’ as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

― bell hooks

The exhibition will debut at Patina Gallery on June 24th, 2026, during Pride Month. Located on E. Michigan Street, Patina is a community-centered gallery and event space dedicated to accessible programming.

The exhibition will also have a designated “Community Day,” where community partners and LGBTQIA+ small businesses are able to table at no cost. Jasmine Tafoya Photo will host a photo pop-up on Community Day, inviting the audience to have their own family documented at no cost while enjoying the exhibit. 

Inspired by bell hooks’ framing of home as both resistance and refuge, “This is Home” offers a joyful, living counter-narrative to the erasure of LGBTQIA+ families. In a moment of increasing political and cultural threat, this exhibition centers softness, visibility, storytelling, and care. As two Queers raised on the southside of Indianapolis and now building a family of their own, Jasmine and Brit offer this work as both a community offering and a commitment to queer public archives.

Meet the families below, check out the link to explore robust galleries from our shared time.

“Being queer saved my life. Often we see queerness as deprivation. But when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me. I had to make alternative routes; it made me curious; it made me ask, ‘Is this enough for me?'”

― Ocean Vuong

Explore Galleries here: COMING SOON!

Power Plant Grant Submission from Application Process: