Tia-Simone Gardner began a new project, There’s Something in the Water, Yemaya and Oshun, amassing footage and archival research to create a seven-channel video installation that documents seven sites along the Mississippi River, chosen because of their relationship to the social, racial, and geographic formation of the United States. She is especially interested in how the African American experience is often perceived to be one of dislocation from ancestry and heritage and the seven sites along the Mississippi River have been chosen due to their relevance in human trafficking during the slave trade. She used her time at ASITW to conduct a community design workshop to prototype the floating modules that will capture footage of the River and host writing groups that will contribute to the text for the video installation.

Tia-Simone is a mixed media artist working in methods of appropriation and installation. She investigates place-based knowledge through personal and collective experiences of space and time. Tia is interested in psychological relationships to locations and the idea of home. She has held residencies in the Netherlands, Sweden and Woodstock, NY in addition to her time at ASITW. She holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She currently lives in Minneapolis, MN.