Connecticut HQ Art

Shikeith is a sculptor, filmmaker, and photographer whose work investigates the experience of Black masculinity and manhood within and around concepts of psychic space. Hazy Blues (2022) is from Notes Towards Becoming a Spill, a series of portraits of Black men inhabiting various states of meditation, prayer, and ecstasy. Here, the artist redefines the idea of sacred space, positioning a Queer ethic that is identified by vulnerability, tenderness, and joy. Hazy Blues was inspired by the potential of glitches as a symbol of disruption among harmful systematic idealities—in this case, the artist has immersed a shadow figure in a sea of blue possibility.

Shikeith received a BA from Pennsylvania State University and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. He lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. Shikeith is recipient of a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and in 2020, he received an Art Matters Foundation Grant and a 2020-21 Leslie Lohman Artist Fellowship. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions, including the Alexander Brest Museum and Gallery, Jacksonville University; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Atlanta Contemporary; and the Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, PA.

His work is in the permanent collections of 21c Museum, Louisville, KY; Baltimore Museum of Art; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and the Newark Museum of Art, among others.