Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s The Trace of an Implied Presence meditates on the living history and influence of contemporary Black dance in the United States. The exhibition centers on a multichannel video installation inspired by the artist’s research into the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 1983 landmark festival, Dance Black America, a dynamic presentation of American dance that featured legendary Black dancers, choreographers, scholars, and dance companies. In The Shed’s Level 2 Gallery, the installation features four individual dance floors that function as stages for projected images of archival dance footage, film portraits of key figures involved with the festival, and the artist’s own documentation of the Philly Bop, a Black social dance from her native Philadelphia.
Approaching her research in BAM’s Hamm Archives as a conversation with the materials she discovered and those who have come before her, McClodden began a dialogue with Mikki Shepard, the lead curator who programmed and produced the festival and appears in one of the film portraits. Along with Patricia Kerr Ross, Shepard organized the weekend celebration of 300 years of African American dance with performances, workshops, and panels, all centering Blackness and the African diaspora. The multichannel video installation in The Trace of an Implied Presence showcases living elders of these dance communities as well as those who have passed, preserving their legacies for the future.
The gallery is demarcated by four illuminated square dance floors, each composed of distinctive materials that respond to the specific needs of different forms of dance. Hovering above each floor is a screen with a projected film portrait of the singular figures or groups McClodden highlights, including Shepard, scholar and tap dancer Michael J Love, dancer and choreographer Leslie Cuyjet, the Rod Rodgers Dance Company. and dancers Audrey & June, a couple upholding the legacy of the Philly Bop.
Continuing her ongoing work of exploring ideas belonging to the African diaspora across multiple disciplines and approaches, The Trace of an Implied Presence weaves together film, performance, sculpture, and sound in a single space. The work amplifies the powerful presence of movement and dance history as a thriving, living record that persists beyond the archive onto the stage and into the street.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a free publication featuring newly commissioned texts by writers selected by McClodden: poet and dancer Harmony Holiday and scholars Jasmine E. Johnson and Samantha N. Sheppard, who together examine the history of Black dance and the nuance of physical and movement-based awareness on the dancer’s body as a living record.
The exhibition will include three special, in-gallery performances with details to be announced.
The exhibition is organized by Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and co-produced by The Shed in partnership with Nike.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s The Trace of an Implied Presence meditates on the living history and influence of contemporary Black dance in the United States. The exhibition centers on a multichannel video installation inspired by the artist’s research into the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 1983 landmark festival, Dance Black America, a dynamic presentation of American dance that featured legendary Black dancers, choreographers, scholars, and dance companies. In The Shed’s Level 2 Gallery, the installation features four individual dance floors that function as stages for projected images of archival dance footage, film portraits of key figures involved with the festival, and the artist’s own documentation of the Philly Bop, a Black social dance from her native Philadelphia.
“I invested in a particular, severe elegance that I wanted to come through with the composition,” says artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden, reflecting on her latest curatorial presentation, The Trace of an Implied Presence. Now on view at The Shed, the exhibition dives ambitiously into the history of contemporary Black dance through the archives of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Tiona’s research on their 1983 festival, Dance Black America. With two additional shows currently on view this month — MASK/CONCEAL/CARRY, a solo exhibition at 52 Walker Street, and The Brad Johnson Tape, X–On Subguation, an installation at MoMa showcasing her newly acquired work — audiences in New York have an expansive opportunity to see the breadth of Tiona’s conceptual approach.
The unsettling, contemplative show “Mask / Conceal / Carry,” at 52 Walker, is the most complex of three exhibitions by this Philadelphia artist, now on view across New York City, which are thematically distinct but united by their conceptual rigor and their interweaving of emotions, erotics, and politics. At MOMA (in a selection of contemporary works from its collection), McClodden exhibits a B.D.S.M.-inflected video installation from 2017, in which she is seen reciting the poem “On Subjugation,” written in 1988, by the late Black gay poet Brad Johnson, while she hangs upside down. At the Shed, a sprawling sculptural installation pairs four portable dance floors with big screens showing films of Black performers.
The relationship between the archive and dance, particularly Black dance in America, is a slippery one. In The Shed’s second-floor gallery, four dancefloors – one made of black Marley (a thin, roll-out vinyl), another of white Marley and two of hardwood – form individual stages for black and white videos of Black performers rehearsing, improvising and performing. Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s exhibition weaves portraits of artists such as Audrey and June Donaldson, two revivalists of Philly Bop, a Black dance form originating in Philadelphia, and Michael J. Love, a tap dancer and scholar, to create a network of contemporary Black dance that runs counter to ‘official’ narratives codified by predominantly white institutions. The empty dancefloors were activated at the exhibition’s opening by a Philly Bop class, led by the Donaldsons, and will host additional performances by Love, Leslie Cuyjet and the Rod Rodgers Dance Company throughout the exhibition’s run, underscoring how embodied presence on the dancefloor connects us to the past in a way the archive alone can’t.
Currently, in New York City, Tiona Nekkia McClodden has not one, but two exhibitions on view. Each is distinct in its message and represents the powerful nature of her dynamically widespread practice. At the art space 52 Walker, “MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY” (open through October 8), approaches its titular themes from a more personal standpoint. And at The Shed, the artist looks at Black joy through the lens of dance by highlighting the 1983 Dance Black America festival in a presentation titled “The Trace of an Implied Presence” (on view until December 11). The exhibition was crafted with the insight of the event’s original producer, former Executive Producer of the Apollo Theater Mikki Shepard, along with a featured cast of dancers, some of whom were participants in the original festival.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s The Trace of An Implied Presence features an ambitious multimedia installation that follows the living history of contemporary Black dance in America. Upon entering the gallery, one encounters a massive multichannel video installation in a large, darkened room. Custom-made dance floors are paired with each video screen, corresponding to the dance style being presented. Their surfaces are reflective and open—mirrors are placed on two of the dance floors, all illuminated in spotlights, and screens float above the floor hovering in space. Inspiration for this project came from McClodden’s time spent researching in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Hamm Archives, specifically BAM’s historic 1983 festival, Dance Black America (DBA), curated by Mikki Shepard and Patricia Kerr Ross. Shepard’s presence floats in and out of the videos—cutting into scenes unexpectedly to discuss the 1983 DBA festival and its celebration of over 300 years of Black dance.
In an ambitious new exhibition at The Shed in Manhattan, artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden presents a survey of contemporary Black dance, including a large-scale video portrait of Audrey and June Donaldson, a married couple who are prominent teachers of a dance that was once central to social life in Black Philadelphia: the Philly Bop. A form of swing dance that evolved from the Lindy Hop, the Philly Bop emerged in the 1950s alongside Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, one of the most popular television shows in the country, which was filmed in the city. But Bandstand’s discriminatory admission policies created a predominantly white show, forcing Black teenagers to find their own spaces. That led to an evolution in style that was distinct from what white dancers were doing.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden, who first garnered recognition for her work as a filmmaker, is experiencing a moment of well-deserved praise within the art world. Perhaps most notably, the artist amassed critical acclaim for I prayed to the wrong god for you, her contribution to the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Now, with a solo exhibition at David Zwirner’s outpost on 52 Walker Street, an extensive curatorial presentation at The Shed, and an installation on view at MoMA, McClodden’s momentum and impact are more palpable than ever. McClodden’s commitment to deciphering society’s complexities through visual mediums was sparked at an early age, and her love for filmmaking and mining history in various forms can be traced back to a source that’s familiar to many: public television.
For Tiona Nekkia McClodden's latest work, The Trace of an Implied Presence, currently on view at the Shed in New York, the artist has installed four dancefloors in the second-floor gallery, each tailored to different specifications. Two are covered in Marley (one black and one white). Two are made of hard wood. Suspended above each dancefloor is a screen, onto which are projected color and black-and-white filmed portraits of Black performers. Here McClodden presents Michael J. Love, a tap dancer and scholar, striking complex rhythms against the floor; Kim Grier-Martinez, current artistic director of the Rod Rodgers Dance Company, talking about Rodgers’s legacy and Black expression in modern dance; Audrey and June Donaldson—two revivalists of Philly Bop—demonstrating their practice of this Black social dance from Philadelphia; and performer-choreographer Leslie Cuyjet mining her own personal dance lineages through improvisation.
It's hard to overstate the longstanding impact of Black dancers on all genres of movement that we know today — from contemporary and jazz to hip-hop and ballroom styles. Unveiled earlier this month at The Shed in New York City, The Trace of an Implied Presence exhibit by filmmaker and curator Tiona Nekkia McClodden revisits archival footage to showcase the legacy — and living contributions — of contemporary Black dance. On display now until the end of 2022, the multichannel video installation anchors on McClodden's research into archival footage Dance Black America, a three-day festival celebrating 300 years of African American dance that took place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in April of 1983. Working in collaboration with cultural worker and presenter Mikki Shepard, who produced the festival, McClodden aims to showcase four vital forms of dance that have been shaped by Black dancers.
The artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden hit the gun range on a sweltering Monday in July. The air was sticky inside the facility, but her routine would not be denied. She shoots every week and avoids weekends, when the range gets crowded and loud with men firing off assault-type rifles, inviting sensory overload. It might be a familiar activity for some Americans. Less so for an artist. But McClodden, 41, a star of the 2019 Whitney Biennial who has three major presentations of work now up in New York City — at 52 Walker, the Shed, and the Museum of Modern Art — didn’t purchase guns and get her carry license two years ago with art in mind. At least at first. She did it — like many other Black Philadelphians, she recalls — after the pandemic drained the streets, and then the George Floyd protests and counter-protests filled them with interlopers and a sense of swirling violence. Safety and self-defense were her concerns.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s artistic practice resists categorization. The talent excels as a painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker and curator. She is the founder and director of Conceptual Fade, a micro-gallery and library centered on Black thought and artistic production. Her work explores shared values and traditions within the African diaspora, the “Black mentifact,” as she calls it. Now, with a solo show on view at David Zwirner’s Tribeca outpost 52 Walker, and another opening August 3 at The Shed in New York, McClodden has firmly established herself as a leading voice in contemporary Black culture.
The Trace of an Implied Presence meditates on the living history and influence of contemporary Black dance in the United States. The exhibition centers on a multichannel video installation inspired by the artist’s research into the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 1983 landmark festival, Dance Black America, a dynamic presentation of American dance that featured legendary Black dancers, choreographers, scholars, and dance companies. In The Shed’s Level 2 Gallery, the installation features four individual dance floors that function as stages for projected images of archival dance footage, film portraits of key figures involved with the festival, and the artist’s own documentation of the Philly Bop, a Black social dance from her native Philadelphia.
