TIONA NEKKIA McCLODDEN: PURE GAZE
White cube is pleased to present "Pure Gaze" by Tiona Nekkia McClodden solo exhibition with the gallery.
3 September – 18 October 2025
Artist statement by Tiona Nekkia McClodden
The first presentation of my series NEVER LET ME GO (2023–ongoing) comprised a set of five works that featured in my 2023 exhibition THE POETICS OF BEAUTY WILL INEVITABLY RESORT TO THE MOST BASE PLEADINGS AND OTHER WILES IN ORDER TO SECURE ITS RELEASE, which focused on concepts of pressure, power dynamics, and the flow of air. The series is a study of what I term a profane hold: a pressure that goes beyond the desires and limits of human interaction. This is why these works are not exhibited as “bodies,” but instead, as abstract figures. I use the word “figure” in the sense of an expectation or desire to move beyond—a desire for abstracted representation attained through a deep reading of material and a search for ways for more freedom to exist.
For PURE GAZE, I wanted to explore making work from a pure aesthetic framework, as well as the complexity of doing so, given my subjective being and intersectional identity, and its entanglement with society and the world. The attempt involved taking the position of the pure gaze in the studio; it felt more honest and allowed me to work from something internal to my process, towards the production of aesthetic-based work. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s 1993 text The Field of Cultural Production, this was a way of acknowledging and suspending the subjective nature of my gaze, to prioritize form and aesthetic experience detached from practicality, function or social meaning. This work is a study of painting and sculpture. It is equally an attempt to create material culture from Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence, which speaks of the unconscious means by which dominant groups exert power over subordinate groups.
The dye penetrates the dermis of the leather and therefore creates a hold from within the hide. With PURE GAZE, I unpack the notion of the gaze as it relates to aesthetics and values, with a desire to complicate its traditional definition as a perception assumed to exist, as in the perception of how people perceive you. This gesture has allowed me to sort through the messiness of abject ideas that relate to the material culture of leather, desire, pleasure, and what it means to be bound to it all.