A Home is a Portal
Inspired by my experiences as a descendant of Eastern European refugees and Central American migrants, the stories visually explore ancestral displacement, colonization, and loss of homeland, capturing the longing, nostalgia, and groundlessness experienced by many diasporic people.
Formatted as a book of thematically connected short stories organized in a nonlinear, recursive manner, the project visualizes the fragmentation of generational memory and its haunting of survivors and their descendants.
The ruminative drawings of A Home is a Portal interweave with prose, drifting between memory, dreamscapes, and the everyday, to ask: Is rooting in a place enough to conjure the feeling of home? Can we transmute inherited trauma into joy and equanimity? The stories blend family lore, natural splendor, magical realism, and cultural in-betweenness, making tangible a lifelong endeavor to set down roots, alchemize trauma, and cultivate spiritual resilience.
A Home is a Portal is an ongoing project still in development, thanks to generous support from the Swedish Writers’ Fund and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. If you are interested in learning more about the project, see “Press & Mentions” or click below to read a sample.
Grants & awards
2024 / One year working grant, The Swedish Authors' Fund
2024 / One year working grant, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee
2023 / Shortlisted, Ung Svensk Form (Swedish Art & Design Award)
2023 / Exhibition grant, The National Association of Swedish Art Societies
2023 / Award, Konstfacks Foundation
2023 / Project grant, Beata Brummers Foundation
2023 / Project grant, Ulla Fröberg-Cramérs Foundation
Exhibitions
2024
Mine, Yours, Ours, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, US
Transcending Time, The Arts Society, Nerja, ES
2023
A Home is a Portal, Östberga Kulturhus, Stockholm, SE
Lugares, PTM Contemporary & NY Latin American Art Triennial, New York, US
HOY, National Museum of Somalia, Mogadishu, SO
A Home is a Portal, Körsbärsgården Konsthall, Burgsvik, SE
Konstfack Spring Exhibition, Konstfack University, Stockholm, SE
Press & Mentions
2024 / “Ludi Leiva’s A Home is a Portal” The One Club for Creativity, written by Alixandra Rutnik
2023 / “Signs from the Underground, Home Invasion and Textile Bliss” C-Print Journal, written by Ashik & Koshik Zaman
Read a sample of A Home is a Portal
Created with support from: