How Shikeith Brings Pittsburgh’s Black History to the Surface | UNW

The artist Shikeith’s photos often feature Black men covered in visible beads of sweat, though the reason — perhaps physical exertion or psychic exorcism — is rarely made apparent. Many of his installations, which have included glass-cast penises, dirt and ship sails, incorporate the range of colors known as haint blues, so named by the Gullah Geechee, a people descended from West Africans who were enslaved on America’s Sea Islands. The Gullah Geechee believed the shades of green, indigo and light blue, when used to paint porches, windows and doors, would ward off evil spirits who’d mistake their homes for water. For Shikeith, 37, water’s power lies largely in its mutability: It represents, he says, a “boundless way of being” that he aspires to.

Shikeith grew up in North Philadelphia with his mother, Shenecqua, a hairdresser turned carpenter, in a rowhouse belonging to his maternal grandmother, an avid storyteller who believed their home was haunted. He dropped his surname, Cathey, early in his career, around the time he made “#Blackmendream” (2014), in which he interviewed men who spoke while naked, with their backs to the camera, as if to invite audiences to listen, not just look. In that work, now part of The Criterion Collection, and those that have followed, the artist depicts Black men with delicacy, trying to coax, from subjects and viewers alike, the amorphous, fluid emotions that patriarchy and racism try to contain. Often, these works are multidisciplinary and undermine strict distinctions between art and audience, creation and curation. The work “Notes Towards Becoming a Spill,” for example, began in 2019 in Atlanta as an installation that viewers were invited to enter and meditate within, before morphing into an experimental opera and dance performed in 2021 on New York’s Rockaway Beach, and then becoming, the following year, the title of his first monograph, published by Aperture and featuring Shikeith’s atmospheric, apparitional photos of Black men alongside archival images collected from eBay and elsewhere.