Tiona Nekkia McClodden

Tiona Nekkia McClodden (July 2, 1981, Blytheville, Arkansas) is an interdisciplinary research-based conceptual artist, filmmaker and curator based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Early life McClodden was born in Blytheville, Arkansas, in 1981. She went to Clark Atlanta University, majoring in film and psychology. Although she did not graduate from Spelman College, McClodden continued extracurricular education in film there.

Career and works McClodden's work explores concepts of gender, sexuality and race, centering a black, queer lineage.

Her work was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia as part of the Speech/Acts exhibit in 2017. In 2017 McClodden won the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. She was a 2016 Pew Fellow and received a grant from Pew in 2018. McClodden's exhibit was a three-hour-long, six-screen film documenting a religious pilgrimage she took to Nigeria, running on a loop. In March 2020, it was announced that McClodden would be included in Prospect.5 in New Orleans, LA, curated by Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi.

McClodden is the founder of Conceptual Fade, a combination gallery and library space in Philadelphia, PA. McClodden cites the inspiration for the space as the Pyramid Club as well as micro jazz bars in Japan. Conceptual Fade's library, is also McClodden's personal library, with a focus on Black artists and available to the public for research.

The Brad Johnson Tape Inspired by a poem by Johnson published in Other Countries: Black Gay Voices, McClodden created a 10-scene performance piece on VHS tape. This exhibition included an installation of artwork by Carolyn Lazard, Sondra Perry, Chloe Bass, and Texas Isaiah and musical performances of Eastman's work.

CLUB McClodden's piece, CLUB, took place in 2018 at the Performance Space New York, in a space where Keith Haring first exhibited. It explored the liminality of nightclubs, where visitors might leave their everyday persona outside and interact with different social boundaries. 2016: Dreaming of KIN - Be Alarmed: The Black Americana Epic, Movement I - The Visions, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Brooklyn, NY 2017: KILO Iba Se 99 Exposition Gemeente Amsterdam, Netherlands 2018: CLUB, Performance Space, New York, NY 2019: Hold on, let me take the safety off, COMPANY Gallery, New York, NY 2021: Be Alarmed: The Black Americana Epic, Movement III - The Triple Deities, Globe Dye Works, Philadelphia, PA 2021: PLAY ME HOME, Prospect New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 2022: MASK | CONCEAL | CARRY, 52 Walker, New York, NY 2023: THE POETICS OF BEAUTY WILL INEVITABLY RESORT TO THE MOST BASE PLEADINGS AND OTHER WILES IN ORDER TO SECURE ITS RELEASE, KunsthalleBasel, Basel, Switzerland

Writing "Texas Isaiah" Artforum, Summer 2018. "My Existential Limits to the Rectification of Past Wrongs, Or, So If You See Me Crying, It’s Just a Sign That I’m Still Alive", Triple Canopy, April 25, 2019 "Six Movements for Shango, Xangô, Changó, Ṣàngó," Love and Ethnology: the Colonial Dialectic of Sensitivity (after Hubert Fichte), eds. Diedrich Diedrichsen and Anselm Franke, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2019 "The Brad Johnson Tape, X - On Subjugation, 2017" Souls Journal, Volume 21, 2020 "A Questionnaire on Decolonization" (Contributor), OCTOBER Journal, December 1, 2020 "Shawné Michaelain Holloway and Tiona Nekkia McClodden," Black Futures, eds. Jenna Wortham and Kimberly Drew, Random House Publishing Group, 2021