Tiona Nekkia McClodden

Tiona Nekkia McClodden (born 1981, Blytheville, Arkansas) is an American interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia. Working across film, video, sculpture, sound, and installation, McClodden’s practice explores race, gender, sexuality, spirituality, and the afterlives of Black genealogies. Her work is characterized by ritual, archival inquiry, and interdisciplinary forms that merge personal devotion with social critique. Her projects frequently engage Black diasporic spiritual practices, embodied research, and narrative biomythography to examine how histories of colonialism, Christianity, and kinship shape contemporary life. Through documentary film, experimental video, sculptural objects, and sound installations, McClodden constructs works that move between intimate ritual and broader cultural analysis. In works such as I prayed to the wrong god for you., she has merged her artistic practice with her spiritual life as a priestess of Ogun, tracing diasporic devotion across the United States, Cuba, and Nigeria.  McClodden was selected for the 2019 Whitney Biennial and received that year’s Bucksbaum Award. She was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2018 and is the founder and director of Conceptual Fade in Philadelphia. Her work has been presented at institutions and venues including The Shed, Performance Space New York, Recess, 52 Walker, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is held in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Rennie Museum.