Tiona Nekkia McClodden

Queer culture and the arts would be much poorer without the presence and contribution of butch and stud lesbians, whose identity is both its own aesthetic and a defiant repudiation of the male gaze.

McClodden hangs upside down in her studio while reciting “On Subjugation,” a 1988 poem by Johnson. “For me, the experience of pain through BDSM has often been a form of self-care that lets me know where I can and cannot go with my body,” McClodden says. “This is important to me in a society that . . . places such severe restrictions on the Black body.” Using her figure as a medium, she pays tribute to Johnson’s ideas in the present. [Overview Courtesy of MoMA]