Philadelphia — Artist Tiona Necchia McLodden I went to the shooting range on a sweltering Monday in July. The atmosphere in the facility is tense, but her daily life is not denied. She shoots every week, avoiding weekends when the range is crowded and noisy, men firing assault-type rifles, and sensory overload.
It may be a familiar activity for some Americans. Not so for artists. However, McLodden, 41, Stars of the 2019 Whitney Biennale He currently has three major presentations in New York City. 52 Walker, hutand the modern art museum — didn’t buy a gun and got a carry license two years ago with Art in mind. at least at first.
She, like so many other black Philadelphians, said that after the pandemic had dried up the streets, and then George Floyd protests and counter-protests filled them with a sense of intruders and swirling violence. Safety and self-defense were her concerns.
The shooting range staff welcomed her warmly — she trained and earned a membership here. She purchased ammo and paper targets with either a pink silhouette or multiple oval targets. Did. In her lane, she took out her three handguns (a Walther .22 with a Glock and a Smith & Wesson, both her 9mm) and carefully placed them in front of her.
“Every bullet I load, I breathe through it,” she said.
An hour later, McLodden went to her studio in North Philadelphia. She, as usual, finished her target practice with a sequence of systematically drawing uninterrupted spells of machine-like fire before each shot. I placed the bet directly — reminding her that this was not a game.
It wasn’t for art, but art happened anyway. ” has been completed.
In her formal widest range, including videos, sculptures, bronzes, texts, and her first series of paintings, we find McLodden, who emerged as a filmmaker before expanding into installations. But the theme is tight. A journey through filming for the artist to confront herself and establish her place in the world – in every aspect of her identity.
Bold and often jarring, the exhibition forms a sort of triptych with McLodden’s other Manhattan presentations this season. brad johnson, a black gay poet who died in 2011, with themes of bondage and fetish. And at Shed, there was a sweeping program she curated on Black’s dance history.
The result is three ways to meet America’s most important artists today, artists who are resolutely personal and candid about race, gender, sexuality, spiritual life, and more. Celebrating forgotten figures like Johnson and entire disciplines like Black in her dance is her way of recognizing and renewing artistic lineage, a kind of accountability.
“This is all an exercise in ignorance,” she said.
Her talisman was displayed on the wall by her desk. A poem by Johnson, a photograph of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a black object with short vertical spikes. It was a rustic tool used to remove seeds from cotton and had associations with black labor. “It’s an expression of emotion, and it causes me immense pain, but it’s almost invisible.”
Topped with one pile of books was “identity of autismA new book by psychologist Devon Price. Back in 2001, her doctor suggested she was on the autism spectrum, but she dismissed the idea.”I took it negatively,” she said. But in 2019, she received a diagnosis—which took time and money—and she continues to embrace that her insight.
“I hid for a long time,” she said. While honing her art, she has lived with symptoms such as her overstimulation, nonverbal periods, and confrontational behavior. She now offers guidance. “I, as a person with autism, at the intersection of many identities, decided to match my lived experience as a state of constant discomfort,” she said. must be uncomfortable
Her autistic experience played a role in the alchemy of events that gave rise to “Mask/Conceal/Carry” (and adds another layer of meaning to the title). When she started shooting training, her noise and her behavior overwhelmed her. “My sensory issues sent me out of range,” she said. “I couldn’t get the sound out of my skin.”
To get ready, she started blank shooting (shooting without ammunition) in the studio. A phone app measured the data from the gun’s nodes and she incorporated that information into the picture. “You can feel everything you see here,” she said. “It’s like a graphics score.”
The studio had a toaster oven and a vacuum press for creating sculptures out of Kydex, a synthetic material commonly used in gun cases. On the walls of the studio were texts stenciled on canvas from the new series. Some read it like a mantra: “train to failure”, “hold it all at once”.
“From training on how to live with differences,” she explained. Her other message to herself — “Black Madness on the Death Star’s Ledge” — felt wilder. “It’s like the name of a punk band,” she said.
Her library books suggest other influences on the show, including titles about trauma and race.sculptor Nancy Grossman Its head evokes ritual binding. Bronze of Benin, and data portraits of pioneering Black Americans from WEB Du Bois. “He can pass on information about the dire situation of the entire group,” she said.
Buying Target online, McClodden discovered a photographic world of staged scenes. It’s a shooter behind a car, a hostage situation. They were often used in law enforcement training, and it intrigued her that almost all of the figures were white, a series of images of her one dark silhouette underneath these characters. I made a video that reveals.
But McLodden is here to observe, not to opine. Sure, she has a point — she supports “red flag” laws that keep potentially dangerous people from owning guns. She’s against gun access for minors and she “doesn’t care” about banning assault rifles, but this is not a show about gun policy.
“As a black woman, I have no interest in expressing or undertaking grief for the greater society,” she said. is.”
52 Walker director Ebony L. Haynes, who curated the exhibition, said the show may feel like it’s well-timed, but it’s not about the news. “The material Tiona is working on has a long history that is important to uncover,” Haynes said.
“If ‘society change’ even creeps into my work, I’m destroying it,” McLodden said.
McClodden had a samurai-like reputation in the art world, reinforced by her choice to stay in Philadelphia. conceptual fade — Stay away from the New York art scene. Her friends go back and forth between expressing their admiration and pointing to her lighter side.
“You use a thumbtack, Tiona uses a razor blade,” says Sadie Barnett, who spent her residency with her at the Skowhegan School in 2018, of her precision. At the same time, “she drinks fancy whiskey, she DJs the best parties of the summer, and she’s a kind person.”
“People are scary!” said artist Kevin Beasley. “She has the ability to tighten up a space just by walking into it.” He added, “She’s the audience you want, someone who makes you more aware of the decisions you make.
McClodden is candid about his strengths. “I have worked through my own difficulties,” she said. “Because I had to figure out what it was.”
She grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. Her family had an unstable and temporary period. She was smart, she was drawn to photography, she was drawn to the punk scene. She enrolled at the University of Atlanta at Clark, but she dropped out.
She’s a lesbian – she uses the term proudly and is convinced it’s alienating – and speaks affectionately of her mentor: “For her first movie, in 2008, she interviewed about 50 black lesbians of various backgrounds. “I was trying to complicate that monolith,” she said.
She has also found a home in the world of BDSM and kink, as well as African and Afro-Cuban spirituality. She was initiated in Santeria and her Orisha is Ogun, the god of iron and war.his power is felt in her Spectacular installation at the 2019 Whitney Biennale, he chopped down trees with an ax in Maine, carved ceremonial objects out of wood in his studio, transported them to Cuba and Nigeria, and filmed the process.it earned her $100,000 backsbaum prize Awarded to outstanding Biennale artists. Whitney’s director Adam Weinberg called her contribution “extremely rich in cultural, historical and spiritual resonance”.
Her fearlessness can now be seen in MoMA’s “The Brad Johnson Tape, X — On Subjugation.” This work, first produced in 2017 and recently acquired by the museum, captures Johnson reciting poetry while suspended by his ankles from a rig. Fetish objects, books and an avalanche of rose petals complete the display.
“This work offers a model of extraordinary freedom. Ranka Tattersall, MoMA Curator of Drawing and Prints. “Understanding and expressing one’s sexuality and eroticism in the most comfortable way possible is one of the greatest services an artist can offer her.”
McLodden’s project at Shedd celebrates dance black america, a landmark festival held in 1983 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Includes custom dance floors, video portraits of dancers of different styles and generations, and performance series. 1 subject is Mickey Shepardproduced original events.
“I’m glad she discovered it,” said Shepard. “She’s recording it again, but through her fresh eyes.”
McClodden recalled spending long hours during the pandemic driving in Louisiana and Mississippi, saying,play me home, her installation at the 2021 Prospect 5 Triennale. It was a journey of roots. She located her relatives and saw the land they owned and other places lost to predatory leases. She recalled that the men in her family were always male and often hunted or served in the army.
Knowing yourself as a shooter deepens this intimate journey. But art is the record of history. “This is what material culture is about to become,” she said. “The statement is that I am in the world. Added. This is what I’ve been doing for 2020-2022.
Tiona Necchia McLodden: Mask/Conceal/Carry
Until October 8 52 Walker, 52 Walker Street, Manhattan (212) 727-1961; 52walker.com.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden: Traces of Implicit Presence
Until December 11th, at the cabin at 545 West 30th Street, New York, (646) 455-3494; theshed.org.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden, The Brad Johnson Tape, X — About Conquest
In Progress, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan. (212) 708-9400. moma.org.
