TNM Studios May 2022 Newsletter
TNM Studios May 2022 Newsletter
Paris, infodumps, Super Saiyan toxic music + an NFT that moved me
Hey Folks,
A missive. This month’s newsletter was started in Paris and finished at my kitchen table in North Philadelphia. Leaning more into what feels best for me from here on out to share my work and thoughts. Part art and a nice info dump.
My visit to Paris was a reprieve and planned months ago as a place to enter without any real work or plans. I did some research there by visiting a few sites of interest but mostly I walked the city for hours at a time and I wrote my ass off daily. I was able to complete a journal top to bottom for the first time in my entire life while there. I visited bookstores, museums, and historical sites. I ate while overlooking the busy streets. But mostly I barely spoke a word and was able to reconnect with an inner voice in a deep way that I am extremely thankful for. It is a lovely city that I hope to return to after I get through this Summer + Fall blitz of work ahead. I won’t be speaking much about this work but ill share this, I have five significant presentations of my work between June and October. When we get to those months i’ll share more but for now…
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The Studio…
I got my first ever personal studio in 2016. I moved in at the end of the year just before Christmas with the help of a director who I provided research for when I was doing research-based work for larger film production. Everyone was away for the holidays and I needed to get my stuff out of storage and to the space to avoid paying for another month.
Studios in Philly at the time (and still are in comparison to other cities) were really affordable. I paid 300 for my studio. 500 sq feet. The highest ceilings you could have ever seen and a really strong range of Black artists, small businesses, and people of all ages working in the building. This environment felt like I had taken the next step to commit to my work in a real way after saving up enough to make the leap to another lease outside of rent. The work that followed came in a blitz of feeling out how big I could be with the creation of my concepts and ideas in real-time.
A little over a year later just after the New Year in 2018 while I was away in LA I received a phone call saying that the building had been shut down by L&I and that we had 48hrs to move our things out before the building was locked. My trip had another week and financially I couldn’t even make the adjustments without it being a blow. The landlord promised that he would move my things out to a storage facility nearby. I was thankful. When I returned I found much of my things thrown into a tiny storage space so carelessly that the image still haunts me to this day. It was devastating. After a few more months I found another studio. Stayed for a while and then the building was sold. After another few months of storage and then in October 2020 my current studio has yielded a refuge and artistic stability at the crucial point of the pandemic. This studio is also where Conceptual Fade a long-time dream was able to be executed during my time before the first studio.
The studio has meant more to me than just a place to work. It has aided in the necessary space that allows me to close the distance between my interests and my desire for action.
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Earlier this year, I purchased an NFT from Seth Tillet, a photographer who lives and works in NYC. The price was 2 ETH and only an edition of ten is available. It was a portrait of Jean Michel Basquiat standing smiling with his arms stretched wide in his first studio space that was provided by the dealer. I received the actual museum-quality print a few months later as promised. It’s now framed and hanging in my current studio as a reminder of that moment and also as a way to think of Basquiat before the hyper-fame and all else that engulfed him as a young Black artist who just wanted to make his work. I will never reach, nor do I desire to reach a Basquiat art star level but I am so thankful to have this tender image of him in my growing art collection as I am very much an admirer of not only his work but his thoughtfulness and conceptual frameworks that are within his work.
I fell in love with the image immediately not just because of its being a Basquiat image, but because it featured Basquiat the young painter before the infamy and before fame took a hold of his work and his very being. He looked with fresh eyes, excited about his work in the set of images, and more than anything it was an image that I had never seen of him before during a time when his image has been put through a range of media to the point of exhaustion. The image brought tears to my eyes as it took me back to the exact moment when I stood in my first studio. I remembered that moment – I was nervous, exhausted and so proud standing in the middle of the room with my hands in my pockets from moving into my own space after working for so many years in my tiny studio efficiency apt in North Philly. All my work prior to that moment could fit on my laptop as I primarily worked on film and video and my sculpture work stay relatively small as well because of space. Once I got into my first studio, my hand and head opened up a great deal and I was able to produce full sets for filming as well as create fully developed spaces where work could sit within space alongside my actions. It remains one of the defining moments of my practice to this day.
The framed image of Basquiat now sits in my studio as a reminder to never take the space for granted.
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Now, after only six years of having a studio to produce my work and build my own world in, I am finally at the place to hire a studio assistant for TNM Studios as well as a paid Gallery Intern for Conceptual Fade;
TNM Studios is looking for a Studio Assistant to work with Tiona Nekkia McClodden on a range of projects that will be premiering this Summer and Fall. This person should be Philadelphia-based and willing to be on-site within the studio as well as able to work remotely. Starting as early as May 15. The timeframe will be June 2022 – Nov 2022 with an option to continue with the studio.
I’m also looking to bring on a [ Cf. ] Gallery Intern (paid) 12hrs per week. Starting in June 2022 – Dec 2002 with an option to continue into 2023. The exhibitions for [ Cf. ] are going to get more expansive and I am prepping the apace for what’s to come. Details can be found here.
More details for both positions can be found here.
Announcements + Exhibitions + Events + and all else...
*I recently was a Visiting Critic at Upenn MFAs thesis presentations last weekend where I had the chance to meet a lot of artists who are producing some interesting work across a range of forms, I also was able to meet thinker + artists Every Ocean Hughes who was a gentle and calm spirit. The Opening reception for the student’s exhibition, Imperative a Struggle: MFA 2022 Thesis Exhibition opens on May 12th and is curated by Jamal Batts.
* There will be a book party for Armando Alleyne’s first monograph A Few of My Favorites. I contributed an essay and will be in attendance to celebrate with Armando. May 20, 2022, Friday at 6pm-8pm Carracci Art, 368 Broadway, #305, New York, NY 10013
Books I’m currently working through –
MAAFA by Harmony Holiday is perhaps one of the most ambitious genre-defying works that I have read in a very long time. Genius work. I’ve honestly spent the past few weeks catching up on Holiday’s online works that are perfect throughout the internet.
Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe – a fucking READ. Truly leveling the neo-liberal madness for what it is and a seminal text for my upcoming exhibition at 52 Walker. The Nocturnal Body…the language generated in this text is haunting and leveling, a must READ.
Good Stock Strange Blood by Dawn Lundy Martin. Wrecked me and is wrecking me, in the right ways. Beautiful language.
Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art – I’ve dedicated the rest of the year to reading artist biographies and memoir works. Wanting to make sense of the underbelly of the life and work of those I admire and those I don’t know much of anything about. Agnes is an artist that I don’t know much about and have read to make more sense of another artist that I am currently writing about (soon come). I’m still working through the text but a detailed portrait of an extremely complex artist who can oftentimes read as minimalist but is deeply more complex.
Music, Films, + Videos…
To start this off, I had this moment when I sat down to watch something during my daily rest period and it was the reality that there are just way too many white-centered sociopath series, films, and podcasts out on these streaming platforms. All premiering in 2022 and I realized how much money was being put into this genre. The fast-tracked investment to produce high-quality films and episodic series while some of these cases aware still in motion completely floored me. This is in relation to the many historical narratives of Black stories that have been neglected. Yet we have a series of fiction about white sociopaths alongside their real trials that are still in play> It’s too much.
The Wilds – Season 2. It’s back and I am admitting that I am committed to the series to make sense of the character study if nothing else. Very interesting turns in the narrative.
Atlanta – Glover is really pushing the edges of how to do TV with this season in relation to staying current with society and allowing his main characters to exist in brief portraits that give space. It’s like an inverse of how to do a critique of whiteness in the mainstream media. Honestly, The Amsterdam episode was trippy and literally feels like my own experiences being Black in Europe alone in art spaces, minus the recognition. Complete cognitive dissonance and damn near satiric experiences nonstop.
Line Sisters – A little-known fact - I went to Clark Atlanta University and spent the next two years after my sophomore year that I dropped filming probates to pay my rent and money to live. To this day I might have one of the largest archives of documentation of probates out there. This film is one of the most absurd and overwrought lifetime films that I have seen in a while. Laughed to the point of tears at the wrong times. Bad TV is like fast food. This one HIT.
Score: A Music Film Documentary – As I prepare works for the exhibition it has been my latest focus to watch composers do their thing. How they look at visuals and produce music for tone and the development of motifs that aid the auteur. It’s a good view into that.
American Gangster: Trap Queens Season 3. - Unmatched. These stories are legendary and there is a lot to learn from these women. Overall, I think it’s a solid series and well done. Lil Kim as the narrator is priceless. I respect these women and what they’ve been through.
Athlean X weight training vids - A weird one but I’m a fan and its improved my gym experience immensely and helped me to train my body without a trainer while decreasing injury during my fitness journey. So many videos and trust me they actually make sense and they really do work overtime. The 22-day ab workout is CLUTCH.
Gabriels – Mind blown. There is so much to say about this band. I’m still processing it. I might write something in a few weeks. But my goodness a revelation. Like when you hear something and you think you’ve heard it before but it is an entirely new type of feeling.
Future’s new album hit Super Saiyan levels of toxicity. Holy Ghost is a standout as well as Chickens with my fave EST Gee
Dream Queen by The Bobby Hamilton Quintet – stunning writing music.
Theme ( For The People ) by Mtume – oddly on repeat. Some childhood memory pushed me back to this and it was even better than I remembered.
Resavoir – Driving music. A nice discovery via the algorithm.
Till next time,
xTiona Nekkia McClodden