TNM_Play Me Home_Four O'Clock Blooms

I  minted a total of twenty – two (22) timelapses documenting the blooming life cycle of a Four o'Clock grown on my window sill before it was buried on Dec 5, 2021 at dusk on land in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana. I started growing this flower in North Philadelphia in 2020 from seeds taken from Louisiana 2019 as a study for the larger work. One bulb survived and I maintained this offspring flower in a small pot in my apt in North Philadelphia and grew it inside, first observing its growth via security cameras while I traveled and then capturing the first bloom in person and via timelapse on August 28, 2021.

Timelapses were captured on location in North Philadelphia, PA from Aug 28 – Oct 4, 2021.

The collector of the NFT will receive a single seed from this flower’s bloom cycle. ( mailing info ust be sent to tnm@tionam.com )

Aboutthe larger body of work: ‘Play Me Home’ is a multi-channel film and video installation inclusive of aseries of related, sculptural objects. This new work blends narrative fictionand nonfiction centered around several intertwined threads. A filmic portrait of theFour O’clock flower, a variety of trumpet flower known for its ability topropagate and thrive on land hostile to most plant life. The Four O’clockflower grows wild throughout the Delta region, on the same lands where theartist’s family settled as some of the earliest Black sharecropping farmers inthe Delta, and where they still own and maintain farmland. This view ontohistorical Black relationships to land, property, and livelihood in the regionis the focus of the channel situated within the sole monitor in the space.Other filmic portraits present scenes from the burial and planting of the dyingflower by McClodden on land in the Lower Ninth ward of New Orleans alongsidethe two trumpets (witnesses), as well as documentation of the land thatMcClodden’s family has lived throughout the Delta. A leather-boundfeature-length script draft, a work in progress for over a decade, centers thefictional narrative of an elderly Black woman’s return to New Orleans, whereshe once played in an all-female brass band, as she comes to the end of herlife. The work’s title references Black musical funerary traditions, as well ashonoring lesser-acknowledged sites and modalities of “home” for Black peopleliving in the U.S. By exploring localized migration in the U.S. South, Play Me Home documents and interrogates place,personhood, and vitality as encountered through the sensual experience of Blackpeople and communities.

Play Me Home, 2021 by Tiona Nekkia McClodden was on view as a part of the Prospect New Orleans Triennial P.5 at the Xavier University of Louisiana Art Gallery from Dec 13, 2021 - Jan 23, 2022


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