Working with the GLBT Historical Society Archives, the installation presents large-scale cyanotypes on silk that blur the line between document and dream. The silks layer archival exteriors with hand-drawn, imagined interiors based on the homes of Bay Area queer and trans elders: Lou Sullivan, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, and Victoria Fernandez (aka Vicki Starr).

Bridging past and present, Where We Made Room holds that while housing insecurity has always been part of queer and trans life, it has never stopped people from finding other ways to build home, whether in unconventional structures, found spaces, or within community.

Making something out of nothing is a skill queer people have always had.

This new exhibition brings together archival images of domestic life, personal photographs, original drawings, and a listening station where visitors can record their own memories of home, creating a living archive that treats intergenerational memory as a form of resistance.

Where We Made Room asserts that this history is not finished. These rooms are still being built.

Exhibition opens to the public Wednesday, August 5th — landing on our Free First Wednesday!

About Aleo Landeta

Aleo Landeta (they/them) is a trans and Latine visual artist and educator based in Oakland whose practice spans drawing, painting, installation, and public programming. Their work centers queer joy as liberation, drawing from lived experience and the communities that have held space for them to live authentically. They have been exhibited at MACLA, Bedford Gallery, Berkeley Art Center, and Jonathan Carver Moore, among others, with work held in the permanent collection of the Bakersfield Museum of Art. Recent support includes the SoEx Alternative Exposure Grant (2025), the King Artist Residency (2024), and the Homebody Fellowship at Ma's House & BIPOC Art Studio (2022). Learn More.