Alma Leiva
Survival map for the outsider (Mapa de supervivencia para el forastero), 2015
Animation, 3:55
On loan from the Artist
On view in the E. Craig Wall, Jr. Academic Center from August 16 – October 3, 2020.
Please note: All buildings on campus, including the Wall Center, are only open to Davidson students, faculty, and staff due to the pandemic. We are planning to re-screen videos at a later date when the campus re-opens to the community! Sign up for our mailing list to stay in the loop.
Alma Leiva notes that Survival Map for the Outsider (Mapa de Supervivencia para el Forastero) is an “investigation and reinterpretation of San Pedro Sula, Honduras,” where the artist had grown up in the 1970’s and 1980’s. In this work, Leiva reacts to the labelling of San Pedro Sula since 2011: ‘the murder capital of the world.’ This animated video is a map that reconfigures the city’s most up-to-date geographic layout as a ‘survival guide’ for those who are not local to that area, and thereby indicating areas that are off-limits. The animated map was constructed on available data and information.
Leiva states, “[My work] has to do with the coping mechanism among individuals who have to live under extreme violence and it’s inspired by the current social situation in my native country and the way that the immigrant has to deal with those issues.”
Alma Leiva was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and moved to the United States when she was fourteen. In 2007, she received her BFA in Photography/Electronic Media from the New World School Of The Arts in Miami, Fl, and completed a MFA in Photography/Film, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA in 2011. Leiva has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, and received multiple fellowships and awards for her work that explores conflict in her homeland that has brought bloody realities to Honduras.
Read about the larger body of work for which Survival Map for the Outsider (Mapa de Supervivencia para el Forastero) was made on Alma’s website:
Survival map for the outsider (Mapa de supervivencia para el forastero), 2015
Animation, 3:55
About Digital Art Exhibitions in the Wall Academic Center: The Van Every/Smith Galleries hosted a national call to artists in the fall of 2019. An interdisciplinary panel of Davidson College community members—including members of the Art Collection Advisory Committee, professors, staff, and students—reviewed hundreds of submissions. The selected artworks screen as mini-exhibitions that change every few months.