January 21, 2021 - 6:00pm
Co-sponsored by the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of the Arts & Sciences and The Dietrich Foundation, the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics & the August Wilson House present; August Wilson House Fall/Winter Fellow and CAAPP Artist in Residence: Shikeith.
This event features ruminations on artistic practice and virtual video performances from multimodal artist Shikeith, local poets, and an audience Q&A.
The performance and reading occur within Shikeith’s current installation, "Feeling The Spirit In The Dark" currently on view at The Mattress Factory Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Shikeith’s installation has been described as a “euphoric” exploration of Black masculinity. About the installation, culture writer Daria Harper observes that Shikeith, “guides viewers on a voyage from the transatlantic slave trade, to an abandoned Pittsburgh church” highlighting how secular ecstatics are “sometimes inextricable from experiencing a more traditional spiritual euphoria.” What are the various forms this ecstasy or glory can take in the contemporary? In the past? In the Black lineage so impacted by slavery? Shikeith will discuss his practice, works-in-progress, and the questions, like these, that inform artistic craft.
The vision of the August Wilson House is to extend August’s heritage by advancing art & culture of the African diaspora and impacting the cultural landscape far beyond the Hill while celebrating the rich store of personal memory and community history into which August dipped the ladle of his transforming art.
Shikeith was born in 1989 in Philadelphia, PA, and currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. He received his MFA in Sculpture from The Yale School of Art, after earning his BA in Integrative Arts from The Pennsylvania State University. His work investigates the experiences of black men within and around concepts of psychic space. His work has recently been featured in institutional solo exhibitions, including the Alexander Brest Museum & Gallery, Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, FL; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; and The Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, PA. In 2019, Shikeith received a Painters & Sculptors Grant from The Joan Mitchell Foundation. This year he was awarded the 2020 Art Matters Foundation Grant and was selected for the 2020 – 2021 Leslie Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship.
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