Tiona Nekkia McClodden - BLACK INSANITY ON THE LEDGE OF A DEATH STAR

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

Printed by Du-Good Press, New York
Published by 52 Walker

Philadelphia-based artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden's (b. 1981) 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.

The present screenprint relates to McClodden's linen paintings created for her 2022 exhibition at 52 Walker, MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY. Standing in for archetypal targets used in “dry fire training” (a practice of shooting without ammunition to improve one's aim), the paintings pivot around the concept of "training to failure," which, in the context of repeated weight-training exercises, proposes the pushing of one's body beyond its corporeal limits. McClodden transmits this idea into her work, communicating a core awareness of the body as it corresponds to the fragile boundaries of the psyche and the spectrum of pain and pleasure that is revealed in these recurrent efforts. Like the type in the paintings—which is set in a textured pigment of pumice, matte grain materials, and black acrylic that looks like molten lava—the black text in the screenprints is raised in slight relief against a smooth black ground. In collaboration with master printer Leslie Diuguid, McClodden was highly involved in the printing process and hand pulled each edition using the stenciled screen.