About the Artist

Leila Victorin is a Haitian-American contemporary artist based in South Bend, IN. As a homeschooled child raised in upstate New York, Leila spent much of her time creating with objects she’d find around the house or outdoors. Some of her first creative memories were writing and drawing pictures on her dolls, shoes, books, or any surface that could be marked in some way. She fell in love with painting while taking a painting class partially in exchange for her mother teaching at a local school. Leila went on to receive a BFA at Andrews University where she developed her first major portrait series depicting refugees living in Albany, New York in 2012.

While she would change gears academically and complete a Master’s in Speech-Language Pathology, she continued to pursue creative work - collaborating with author Rufaro Musvosvi and Boldstroke Films to bring to life Musvosvi’s Dark Matter Experience at the South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center and South Bend Civic Theater. Over the coming years, she would paint more than 100 portraits of historical and contemporary Black figures. Her large scale portrait murals lead her to be featured on NPR music, Mayhue Magazine, the Crocker Art Museum of Sacramento and later receive the 2021

Her work took a shift at the end of 2021 when she began to take a more personal approach. She created a mini-series featuring the clutter in her home as she prepared to move back across the country, followed by collections that would continue highlighting the ways in which people collect memories. Her current work takes inspiration from some of her earliest childhood memories, traditional Haitian art, and her work in child development to help make sense of some of the ways in which we collect memories across the lifespan.