Work
Press Release
Ramekon O’Arwisters: SCHISM
Exhibition Dates: 13 September – 18 October
🗓 Reception for the artist: Saturday, September 13th, 3:00 – 5:30 pm
🗓 SPECIAL EVENT: Thursday, September 18th from 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
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On the occasion of Ramekon O’Arwisters’ exhibition SCHISM, PSG extends a warm invitation to an evening with our special guest Key Jo Lee, Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), who will be in conversation with artist Ramekon O’Arwisters. We’re also thrilled to welcome Paul Henderson, an art collector and cultural strategist, as our co-host, who will provide introductions for the speakers. RSVP for seating!
In Conversation:
Key Jo Lee leads a conversation with Ramekon O’Arwisters! Introductions by Paul Henderson
Key Jo Lee is Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. In this role, Lee oversees the strategic direction for the museum’s exhibitions and programs; leads globally on identifying and promoting emerging artists from the African diaspora; and works to expand MoAD’s reach and influence locally, nationally, and internationally. She is responsible for the overall management and execution of the museum’s curatorial vision, including its exhibitions, publications, and public and educational programs, and plays an important role in the organization’s outreach, communications, and digital strategy.
Lee has a master’s degree from and is PhD candidate in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University. Her first book, Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking, was published by Yale University Press and The Cleveland Museum of Art in January 2023.
Paul David Henderson is a speaker, writer, legal & political analyst. He is also a San Francisco–based art collector, producer, and cultural strategist whose work centers on the intersection of art, justice, and representation. As a social justice attorney and passionate arts advocate, Paul has built a distinctive collection that champions artists of color.
A frequent speaker at global art fairs like Art Basel (Miami), Frieze LA, FOG Design + Art, and SF Art Market, Paul lectures on the economics of art, investment strategies, art as an asset class, and the legal nuances of creative production. His broad expertise has included support with major galleries and museums across the U.S., and he has advised a range of collectors, from emerging enthusiasts to major institutions like Christies and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Collection. Paul Henderson is a co-founding member of the Warner Music Group Social Justice Fund, stewarding a $100 million philanthropic mission supporting institutions like the Studio Museum, MoAD, and Black Cultural Archives.
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RAMEKON O’ARWISTERS | SCHISM
Following the successful 2024-2025 solo exhibition of HOUSE OF at Craft Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles we’re excited and honored to present SCHISM, Ramekon O’Arwisters’ first one-person exhibition at PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY in DTLA!
SCHISM, by definition, is a fracture, division, disharmony in beliefs or rules by which we live and understand relationships, politics, religion, community. The choice of SCHISM as a title is not so much a reflection of discord within O’Arwisters but an acknowledgement of chaotic shifts and swings in predictability and safety. Targeting, overreach, and coded responses are not new to Black Americans; finding ways to navigate being Black and Queer between the hazards is the theme of this upcoming exhibition.
between the hazards is the theme of the upcoming exhibition, a watery ground of coded abstraction. On view in the exhibition will be the artists’ iconic bound leather sculpture, Black on Black; tapestries from the Bound in Black series; selections from their B&W self-portraits; and new textile sculptures!
Ramekon O’Arwisters abstract sculpture and tapestries dive into the abyss and the beautiful. With large sharp ceramic shards knotted together using shredded fabric and black zip ties, the sculptures stand as cultural totems, embodying the couture of drag, Black culture, African American quilting and religion. Growing up in Jim Crow South during the Civil Rights Movement, O’Arwisters had a safe haven, quilting with his Grandmother where he was “embraced, important and special.” These early memories prompted his nascent series of unique crocheted/ceramic sculptures, Mending (2016).
In his 2019 series Cheesecake, O’Arwisters transformed his sculpture from something broken, to fully determined and self-aware. Being Black and Queer, the full complexity of the moniker Cheesecake, used to objectify an attractive, sexualized man or woman was not lost to O’Arwisters. Instead he embraced it, subverting the demeaning implication in describing his said, “objects”. Combining lacy, embellished fabrics with ceramics contributed by students and faculty from California State University at Long Beach, O’Arwisters sculptural hybrids embodied both danger and seduction in this bold ‘coming of age’ series.
Bitten (2022), takes off and embellishes upon Cheesecake and Flowered Thorns, 2020-21. With Flowered Thorns, O’Arwisters exaggerates sharp ceramic shards to align with the biblical reference of Adam and Eve, the symbol of original sin derived from sexual pleasure. Bitten continues with soft and sharp elements as he laces implements of punishment and threat throughout the sculpture: black zip ties, rope and clamps. O’Arwisters recontextualizes danger as an erotic entanglement of sexual fantasy and play, placing the sculpture on a new metaphoric plane.
Schism promises to be just as provocative and breathtaking!
In his knotted and wrapped sculptures, Ramekon O’Arwisters incorporates ceramic shards, zip ties, leather, and clamps, questioning the meanings we project onto specific materials. His practice is grounded in his identity and experience as a Black and queer man, and his artworks reflect a spectrum of intertwined perseverance, resistance, spirituality, and eroticism. House Of encompasses five bodies of work created between 2016 and 2024, each focused on a separate theme from the familial tradition of quilting to the pleasure and pain of BDSM practices, as well as three new, large-scale tapestry-like wall works.
– Matt Stromberg, Hyperallergic, April, 2025
Ramekon O’Arwisters recent press includes Hyperallergic 2025; “Artist Takeover,” Artillery Magazine 2025; Essence Magazine 2025; “In the Studio”, a video production of the Fine Arts Museums San Francisco, plus more. O’Arwisters is the 2021 recipient of the McLaughlin Foundation Award for The Project Space at Headlands Center for the Arts, Artist-in-Residence program, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant for 2020/21, the de Young Museum Artist in Residence; The Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; the Djerassi Resident Artists Program; Recology San Francisco Artist in Residence Program and the Vermont Studio Center. Grants and Awards include Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue, NY; the San Francisco Foundation; the San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Initiatives Program; Black Artists Fund, Sacramento; and the Eureka Fellowship awarded by the Fleishhacker Foundation in San Francisco. Museum exhibitions include House of, Craft Contemporary Museum Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design, FIGHT AND FLIGHT: CRAFTING A BAY AREA LIFE; American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA), Making in Between: Gender Identities in Clay (MIB:GIC); and San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Queer Threads. Born in Kernersville, North Carolina, O’Arwisters earned a M.Div. from Duke University Divinity School in 1986.
In the studio is a new video series from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco that offers an intimate look into the creative practices of artists across the Bay Area. June 2025