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Installed at Arts Landing, Hold is made of weathering steel and neon. The sculpture extends Project Blue Space, Shikeith’s initiative exploring the spiritual, cultural, and political relationships Black communities have forged with water. Its title gestures toward both the hold of a slave ship and the body as a vessel of memory, feeling, and endurance. Within, the work glows haint blue, a color rooted in Gullah Geechee traditions of protection. Its light pulses like breath. Over time, the steel exterior will deepen and shift with weather.

About the Artist

Shikeith is a visual artist and filmmaker whose work explores psychological landscapes and how history persists in the present. Hold, his first public art commission, brings this inquiry into civic space.

Hold by Shikeith is commissioned by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust for Arts Landing. Hold is developed as part of Project Blue Space, a web-based platform mapping the cultural, spiritual, and political relationships Black communities have forged with water. The project is funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities in Place initiative.