Artist Highlight: T. Eliott Mansa
Photo courtesy of World Red Eye.
Meet T. Eliott Mansa, who joined the Bakehouse Art Complex in January 2023, and is a Miami-based visual artist. Mansa received a BFA from the University of Florida (2000) and an MFA from CUNY-Hunter College (2018), and attended Yale School of Art.
Recent exhibition venues include LnS Gallery and David Castillo Gallery in Miami, FL; Rush Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; and Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore, MD. Mansa is a recipient of the 2019 and 2022 Ellies Creator Awards, the Green Space Initiative Grant, and the YoungArts Microgrant.
Mansa has participated in residencies at Oolite Arts, Miami Beach, FL, and Artpace, San Antonio, TX. His artwork is in the collection of the African American Museum of the Arts, in Deland, FL, and was recently acquired by the Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL.
Can you tell us about your artistic practice?
My assemblage paintings and sculptures incorporate found materials that subvert their original intended use by allowing me to reimagine them as apotropaic objects. My work incorporates an aesthetic of amalgamation found in grassroots roadside memorials, Southern vernacular sculpture, and West African artmaking practices such as nkisi nkondi and bocio sculpture making.
Tell us about a personal artistic project or body of work that you are currently excited about.
I am currently excited about a series of works entitled “Dirge Blues”. They are the first stand-alone sculptures I have made since I moved back to Miami in 2018. I transform children’s vehicular toys, by covering them in various objects traditionally associated with mourning or found in roadside memorials. I am happy to have my roomy studio space at Bakehouse, which allows me to explore sculptural works that used to take up a lot of my studio space.
Tell us about how you have developed as an artist since you began working at Bakehouse.
I definitely have developed as an artist while working at Bakehouse. During my time as an artist working at Bakehouse, I have begun to make work at a larger scale, both in my two-dimensional work, as well as my stand-alone floor-based sculptures.