By: Ray Zhao

Shooting at a range might be familiar to many Americans, but is an unusual medium for an artist. Tiona Nekkia McClodden makes her art using guns. Her art has already made it to the Whitney Biennial. She also has three shows around New York City and has many more around the world.

While much of her art is related to guns and shooting, McClodden didn’t get her carry license in 2020 with the intention of creating art. She recalls that she got her carry license along with many other Black Philadelphians after the George Floyd protests raised safety and self-defense concerns.

Now, McClodden routinely goes to the gun range once a week. The result is an exhibition called “Mask/Conceal/Carry,” involving mediums from painting, to organic and inorganic materials to video. Together, they express her research into the limits of embodiment and exertion as well as her interest in gestures of concealment. McClodden, a professional filmmaker before she expanded her work to installations, made the exhibition in her studio in Philadelphia. Her studio is unique as well — poems, mantras, and pictures — all adorn the walls.

One of the books in McClodden’s studio is “Unmasking Autism,” by psychologist Devon Price. McClodden remembers that doctors have told her that she might have autism since 2001, but it was only in 2019 when she received a diagnosis. It was expensive, but she “continues to embrace its insights.”

“I hid for a long time,” McClodden said. She lived with the symptoms, forging her art and living her life. She says, “I’ve decided to match my lived experience as a person with autism, at the intersection of a lot of identities, as a constant state of discomfort.”

The New York Times’ Siddhartha Mitter reports that “McClodden’s autism experience played a role in the alchemy of events that produced “Mask/Conceal/Carry,” and adds another layer of meaning to the title.”

McClodden recounts the first time she went to the shooting range to be very uncomfortable, as she was overwhelmed by the noise and action of shooting. “My sensory issues sent me out of the range,” she said. “I couldn’t get the sound off my skin.”

McClodden is also famous for other works unrelated to guns. One of her works, a film that the Whitney Biennale’s director, Adam Weinberg, called “extraordinarily rich with cultural, historical, and spiritual resonances,” documents a religious pilgrimage McClodden took to Nigeria won her the $100,000 Bucksbaum Award. She has also won awards like the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. She has also received grants from the Magnum Foundation Fund grantee and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.