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Shadow Play - A Pop-Up First Friday Art Exhibition
This October, two Indianapolis-based artists will bring light, shadow, and layered storytelling to life in a one-night-only pop-up exhibition. Shadow Play opens Friday, October 3, 2025, at 862 Virginia Avenue in Fountain Square, as part of Indy’s First Friday gallery walk.
Shadow Play brings together the work of Leslie Keith Shaw and Todd Fuqua, two artists who use shadow as both material and metaphor. Shaw traces fleeting figures cast on sidewalks and streets, while Fuqua creates digitally projected performances on the body itself. Together, their practices transform shadow into a space of queer joy, resistance, and play—blurring the line between public and intimate, concrete and flesh.
For Shaw, who has been creating art in Indianapolis for more than two decades, overlooked textures—sidewalk cracks, discarded objects, even items placed on a scanner—become radiant abstractions. Diagnosed with HIV in 1987, Shaw’s practice is both sanctuary and celebration, proof that life continues to hold meaning, mystery, and joy.
Fuqua, a queer non-binary photographer and storyteller also living with HIV, works at the intersection of art and advocacy—what they call artivism. Through community-driven projects such as #BLOOM, #CelebrateUU, and #ShadoWORK, Fuqua layers photography, shadow, and texture to spark dialogue around stigma, resilience, and liberation.
What unites their work is a shared belief: that beauty and truth are always present, even if hidden at first glance. Whether drawn from the cracks of a city sidewalk or from the resilience etched on the human body, Shadow Play invites audiences to see differently—to notice, to question, and to feel.
