Camila Leiva Anderson

2020 Early-Career Project Grantee | $8,000

“Aquí estamos y no nos vamos” Latinx Community Mural in Worthington

Anderson will paint a community-driven outdoor mural to be painted on a prominent wall of the Azteca Restaurant, located on the main street in Worthington, Minnesota. This immigrant-owned Mexican restaurant is an important site of gathering for the Latinx community in Worthington. Anderson will lead the mural process, her largest to date, with a group of Latinx youth from UNIDOS MN who will work as mural assistants.

Camila Leiva (she/her) is a muralist, painter and comics creator born in Santiago, Chile during the final years of the military dictatorship, into a family deeply committed to the fight for justice. She worked as a public high school teacher in New York City and Santiago, before moving to Minneapolis. In 2019 she was part of the Power of Vision artist cohort that painted the “Defend, Grow, Nurture Phillips” mural on Franklin Ave through HOPE Community, and was an artist facilitator of the Latinx Mural Apprenticeship Program through CLUES. She recently received the MSAB Artist Initiative grant to work on the first part of her graphic novel, tentatively titled “Consecuencia.”

The McKnight Foundation generously enables Forecast to provide Professional Development Grants for mid-career artists seeking to expand their work in the field of public art. Forecast mid- and early-career grants are designed to support independent projects, leadership development, professional development, risk-taking, multidisciplinary approaches, and collaborative problem-solving in the field of public art.