NEW YORK, NY.- Yossi Milo announced that works by Shikeith have been acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. This has been a year of great institutional interest in Shikeith, as the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has recently unveiled Shikeith’s first public sculpture commission at Arts Landing in Pittsburgh, PA, while his work is currently on view at the Hammer Museum as part of their exhibition SPACE IS THE PLACE.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has acquired Phantasmatic Apparatus (2025) by Shikeith.
Phantasmatic Apparatus draws on the visual language of seventeenth-century Dutch vanitas painting and the iconography of alchemy. This work situates Black spiritual practice within longer histories of ritual, belief, and invention. Scientific glassware, a vintage radio, and ceremonial objects surround costumed figures caught mid-gesture, suggesting a ritual already underway. A white cloth held in the composition carries a dual inheritance, recalling both Christian baptismal rites and diasporic burial traditions where the cloth protects the spirit during its passage between worlds. The work extends the artist's ongoing engagement with hauntology, asking how unresolved histories continue to inhabit contemporary structures, technologies, and systems of belief.
Phantasmatic Apparatus was shown in Shikeith’s solo exhibition, People Who Die Bad Don’t Stay in the Ground, at the TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image in Philadelphia, PA this past November. In these works, Shikeith chronicles the enduring legacy of historical traumas and their persistent reverberations across successive generations, actively resisting attempts at erasure and historical amnesia.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston has acquired Shikeith’s bronze sculpture Ceremonies (2024). This is Shikeith’s second acquisition with the museum for their permanent collection.
Ceremonies is anchored in Shikeith’s interest in the metaphysical facets of water, and its roles as a boundary, a method of cleansing, and an emanation from the body. The sculpture’s subject holds an antique West African water vessel, connecting to diasporic spiritual traditions, ritual, and offering. Shikeith’s work routinely interrogates the sociopolitical structures and histories that oppress the psychological landscapes of marginalized communities. Influenced by his interest in hauntology and spiritual traditions from the African diaspora, Shikeith’s artwork both mines and speculates on methodologies of disentangling and reconciliation.
Another edition of Ceremonies is currently on view at the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC.
With a complex multidisciplinary practice, Shikeith (b. 1989; Philadelphia, PA) interrogates the sociopolitical structures and histories that oppress the psychological landscapes of marginalized communities. Influenced by his interest in hauntology and spiritual traditions from the African diaspora, Shikeith's artwork both mines and speculates on methodologies of disentangling and reconciliation. His photographs employ magical realist aesthetics, creating elusive compositions challenging gender norms and asking viewers to engage with the invisible forces that shape their perception of the subjects depicted and self.
Works by Shikeith are held in the permanent collections of major public institutions, including the 21c Museum, Louisville, KY; 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; Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC; 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.
