Shikeith (b. 1989, Philadelphia, USA) is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose work explores the emotional and psychological lives of Black men and how those lives are shaped by the afterlives of colonialism, racial violence, and heteropatriarchy. Drawing on hauntology and African diasporic spiritual traditions, he asks how history lingers in the body and the built world, not only as memory but as atmosphere. Working across photography, sculpture, moving image, performance, and installation, he renders the Black male body as both physical presence and psychic space.
Works by Shikeith are held in the permanent collections of major public institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadephia, PA; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC; 21c Museum, Louisville, KY; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA, among others. The artist has mounted solo and group exhibitions at the TILT Institute of Contemporary Image, Philadelphia, PA; MAK Gallery, London, UK; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; and The Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, PA, among others. Shikeith is the recipient of the 2026 Humanities in Place Grant from the Mellon Foundation and the 2025 VMFA Aaron Siskind Award for Photography from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Residencies include the Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans, LA, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, New York, NY. Shikeith earned a BA in Integrative Arts from the Pennsylvania State University and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT. The artist lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.