Tiona Nekkia McClodden takes an interdisciplinary approach as a visual artist, filmmaker and curator to interrogate ideas of ritual and order through its relationship to identity and the conditions of being human. Traversing documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, sound installation and poetry, her practice explores themes of Black interiority, biomythography and queer poetics. ex. 2.1 [Manilla Study] (2025), is an object that the artist is using to study the relationship between the economic history of dormant currency as it relates to power and the concept of disintegration. This is for a larger body of work set to debut in 2026, the 250th Anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence. The object has undergone a precise intervention to reveal its original form that existed over 200 years ago. The manilla is primarily composed of brass, dirt and patina and is displayed in a custom velvet case, which includes a handwritten letter from the artist.
 

Tiona Nekkia McClodden (b. 1981, Blytheville, Arkansas, USA; lives and works in Philadelphia, USA). Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Play Me Home’, Baltimore Museum of Art (2023); ‘THE POETICS OF BEAUTY WILL INEVITABLY RESORT TO THE MOST BASE PLEADINGS AND OTHER WILES IN ORDER TO SECURE ITS RELEASE’, Kunsthalle Basel (2023); ‘The Trace of an Implied Presence’, The Shed, New York (2022); ‘MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY’, 52 Walker, New York (2022); ‘The Triple Deities’, Philadelphia (2021); and ‘Hold on, let me take the safety off’, Company Gallery, New York (2019). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York (2023– 24); El Museo del Barrio, New York (2022–23), touring to Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona (2023) and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2023– 24); ICA Los Angeles (2022); Prospect 5, New Orleans (2021–22); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2021); New Museum, New York (2021); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2019); and the Whitney Biennial, New York (2019).