In this paper, we propose a fully autonomous, local-modes-based data partitioning algorithm, which is able to automatically recognize local maxima of the data density from empirical observations and use them as focal points to form shape-free data clouds, i.e. a form of Voronoi tessellation. The method is free from user- and problem- specific parameters and prior assumptions. The proposed algorithm has two versions: i) offline for static data and ii) evolving for streaming data. Numerical results based on benchmark datasets prove the validity of the proposed algorithm and demonstrate its excellent performance and high computational efficiency compared with the state-of-art clustering algorithms.