White Cube has announced the global representation of visual artist, filmmaker and curator Tiona Nekkia McClodden (b. 1981, Blytheville, Arkansas).
Raised in Greenville, South Carolina, and based in Philadelphia, McClodden’s practice spans documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, painting, sound installation and poetry.
Her interdisciplinary approach interrogates ideas of ritual and order through their relationship to identity and the conditions of being human. Weaving narratives through archives, memories and objects, which are integral to her past and present, McClodden examines and amplifies experiences relational to her personal identity.
Significant projects include her 2019 Whitney Biennial video installation I prayed to the wrong god for you, which won the prestigious Bucksbaum prize, as well as the year-long installation The Brad Johnson Tape, X – On Subjugation currently on display at MoMA, New York. McClodden’s pivotal solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, ‘THE POETICS OF BEAUTY WILL INEVITABLY RESORT TO THE MOST BASE PLEADINGS AND OTHER WILES IN ORDER TO SECURE ITS RELEASE’, is on view until 13th August 2023.
In fall 2023, McClodden’s work will feature in the inaugural exhibition at White Cube’s New York gallery at 1002 Madison Avenue. Titled ‘Chopped & Screwed’ and curated by Courtney Willis Blair (White Cube Senior Director, US), the exhibition will bring together works by artists including Michael Armitage, Theaster Gates, Robert Gober, David Hammons, Mona Hatoum, Julie Mehretu, Cady Noland, Danh Vo, and more.
In February 2024, the artist’s first U.K. solo exhibition will open at White Cube Bermondsey, London.
About the artist
Tiona Nekkia McClodden was born in 1981 in Blytheville, Arkansas, was raised in Greenville, South Carolina and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She studied Film and Psychology at Clark Atlanta University in 2002, followed by an apprenticeship in Film and Video with Larry Steele at Educational Media Center at Spelman College, Atlanta, in 2004.
Her work was exhibited in major institutions including Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2023); Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona (2023); El Museo del Barrio in New York (2022–23); MoMA, New York (2022–23); ICA Los Angeles, California (2022); Prospect 5, New Orleans, Louisiana (2021–22); the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (2021); and New Museum, New York (2021); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2019). Other presentations of her work have been on view at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin (2019); MOCA, Los Angeles (2017); MCA Chicago, Illinois (2017); and MoMA PS1, New York (2016).
In recent years, McClodden has won prestigious grants and fellowships, including the Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2022), Princeton Arts Fellowship (2021–23); the Bucksbaum Award, Whitney Museum of American Art (2019); Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts (2019); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2017); and the Pew Fellowship (2016). Her film works have been included at the Kansai Queer Film Festival in Osaka and Kyoto, Japan (2014) and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (2009), among an array of international film festivals and film programmes.
Her writing has been featured on the Triple Canopy platform, in Artforum, Cultured Magazine, ART 21 Magazine, and many other publications. In 2020, McClodden founded Conceptual Fade, a project gallery and library that hosts micro-exhibitions and publications centred on Black art and conceptual practice.
White Cube’s exhibition programme extends across locations in London, Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Seoul, West Palm Beach and online. Since its inception in 1993, the gallery has exhibited the work of many of the world’s most highly acclaimed contemporary artists.
