On October 26th, We hosted our monthly AIRIE Asks with our October Fellow T. Eliott Mansa and took an intimate look at his practice, process, and month-long stay in the Florida Everglades. Interviewed by guest moderator Melissa Hunter Davis, creator of Sugarcane Magazine, Mansa discussed in depth his research on the history of the Black Maroons of Florida, the Seminole Maroons, and Seminole Freedmen coming to the Florida swamps seeking liberation. From discussing his practice as a multidisciplinary artist to describing his first encounter with an alligator, this AIRIE Asks was not one to miss.

T. Eliott Mansa is a multidisciplinary artist creating assemblages, paintings, and sculptures that incorporate the aesthetic of amalgamation found in visionary Southern vernacular sculpture. Mansa works to question the efficacy of political art making, by creating a ritual practice to honor, memorialize, protect, and defend Black Lives from state and extrajudicial violence. When considering the outdoors as a place of belonging, T. Eliott has come to utilize his artwork as a foundation for exploration while communicating ideas around equity within the environmental movement. Eliott wants to bring more attention to the history of the Black Maroons of Florida, the Seminole Maroons, and Seminole Freedmen coming to the Florida swamps seeking liberation.

T Eliott Mansa, born 1977, lives and works in Miami, FL. Mansa received a BFA from the University of Florida (2000) and an MFA from CUNY-Hunter College (2018). Recent exhibition venues include the African American Museum of the Arts in Deland, FL, Miami Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora. Mansa has received the 2019 Creator Award from Oolite Arts, a Green Space Initiative Grant, a Young Arts Emergency Microgrant, and a Miami Independent Artist Stipend Grant. He has attended residencies at Oolite Arts in Miami Beach, and Artpace in San Antonio. His work is in the permanent collection of the African American Museum of the Arts in Deland, FL. More on T. Elliot.