This fundraising edition is produced in support of Printed Matter / St Marks, on the occasion of Frieze New York 2021.
The new screen print by Tiona Nekkia McClodden is of her piece, A.B. 2 BLANK, 2019, a restored leather lineman harness, the first completed object from her 2019 exhibition Hold on, let me take the safety off. This object comes from a series of leather harnesses in honor of the late photographer Alvin Baltrop and references the homemade and modified harnesses Baltrop made to suspend himself from the rafters of the NY Piers to photograph the architecture and some of his subjects. This style of lineman harnesses from the 70s-80s were originally circulated and resold amongst construction workers who performed high-risk tasks at great heights. Highly valued by the linemen, McClodden reflects their care in her meticulous reconditioning of each harness.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden [she/her] is a visual artist, filmmaker, and curator whose work explores and critiques issues at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social commentary. McClodden’s interdisciplinary approach traverses documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, and sound installations. Most recently, her work has explored the themes of re-memory and narrative biomythography. In 2017-18 she curated A Recollection. + Predicated. as a part of the multi-artist retrospective Julius Eastman: That Which is Fundamental at both the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia and The Kitchen in New York. She is the recipient of a Bucksbaum Award for her work in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts (2019), a Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism from Bard College (2018), and a Pew Fellowship (2016), among others. Her work has also been shown at Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Museum of Modern Art; Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) – Berlin; MOCA LA; MCA Chicago, and MoMA PS1. She currently lives and works in North Philadelphia.
