Shikeith at Yossi Milo Gallery
Grace is the situation of being blessed. It additionally describes a sure easy motion: it’s meant to return to us with ease. However for his debut exhibition at Yossi Milo Gallery, multidisciplinary artist Shikeith warns us by way of the present’s title that for Black queer individuals, “grace comes violently.” The light but tense images, sculptures, and five-channel video-cum-sculpture work right here redefine this high quality of ease and divinity with exceptional energy.
For the artist, grace is burdened by the previous: like a spirit, it may be imperceptible however all over the place. Shikeith’s images point out as a lot: They’re cloaked in chiaroscuro, tainted with the shadows of historical past that proceed to hang-out the now. Within the images Visiting Hours, 2022, and A Clearing, 2021, figures transfer out and in of illumination, their vaporous our bodies flickering between a visual world and a spectral area. The previous is revivified not solely in tone, but additionally in coloration. Deep blacks and browns are accentuated by “haint blue,” a hue historically utilized by the Gullah-Geechee individuals of the southeastern coast of the US to keep at bay evil spirits. The pigment is derived from crushed indigo vegetation which, when manually cultivated, can depart a long-lasting stain—like reminiscence, or brutality.
All through the exhibition, this ghost coloration is combined in with the shades of visceral life and resurrection. In a photographic diptych titled Feeling the Spirit within the Darkish, 2021, the method of cleaning and rebirth is suspended in time and multiplied: Captured at two totally different angles, a person pours water on himself from a jug as the only real officiant of his personal baptism. The regenerative energy of water runs all through the exhibition, the place pores and skin is slick with sweat. However this consideration to the flesh coincides with a hushed interiority. Eyes—these proverbial home windows to the soul—are at all times closed, downcast, or cropped out. Their interior life eludes our sight however grips us at a degree of deep feeling, quietly.
— Zoë Hopkins
