An image in the artists studio
An image in the artists studio

Tiona Nekkia McClodden: MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY

52 Walker is pleased to announce its fourth exhibition, MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY, featuring the work of Philadelphia-based artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden. McClodden will present new paintings, objects made of materials both organic and inorganic, and videos that together foreground her research into the limits of embodiment and exertion as well as her interest in gestures of concealment. 

McClodden’s expansive practice comprises film, installation, painting, and sculpture in addition to writing and curating. Encompassing the personal, the historical, and the mythic, her work considers the presence and absence of the black figure as well as the aesthetic strategies of illumination and opacity that subvert available modes of representation. 

Installed under custom lighting, the works in MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY evince a variable blackness, realizing and dissolving figures and forms that are not immediately visible to the viewer. In her work McClodden has engaged with “masking” and its many meanings and guises, as well as “unmasking,” in which, as an autistic adult, she attempts to unlearn an assimilationist tendency to suppress one’s true self in order to appear neurotypical. This relates closely to “concealing,” a purposeful act of obstruction that, along with “carrying,” suggests associations with firearms regulation in the United States. “Carrying” also touches on deeper psychological aspects regarding trauma and burden that are threaded through the works. 

Read More at 52Walker.com

Image: In the artist’s studio, 2022

Dates
July 13October 8, 2022
Opening Reception
Wednesday, July 13, 4-8 PM
Artist
Tiona Nekkia McClodden
A print by Tiona Nekkia McClodden, titled BLACK INSANITY ON THE LEDGE OF A DEATH STAR, dated 2022.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden

BLACK INSANITY ON THE LEDGE OF A DEATH STAR, 2022
Two-color screenprint on Ebony Colorplan paper with four [4] corner grommets
24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.7 cm)
Edition of 27, 7 AP
$2,000unframed

    Read More Read Less

      Read More Read Less