Yoland Skeete, is a Caribbean American artist of Asian, African and European descent. She is the author of “When Newark Had a Chinatown”.

She has authored a book entitled: When Newark Had A Chinatown a documentation of the Newark Chinatown that existed in Newark from 1870s to the 1970s, published by Dorrance Publishing.

As Director and co-founder of the Sumei Multidisciplinary Arts Center in Newark, one of Newark’s leading artist run alternative spaces from 1993 to 2015. She received awards from the city of Newark for her outstanding cultural contributions and her organization received recognition by New York Foundation For The Arts and New Jersey State Council on the Arts for outstanding arts programming.

She worked professionally as a documentarian and has won several awards for her film editing.  She was on the cutting edge of the major political movements of the sixties and seventies in California where she worked as a reporter and editor for radio, television and newspaper. In California, Ms Skeete edited the first newspaper in the US for women entitled “The Third World”. In 2001, she produced the film documentation of the lost history of African American culture in Cape May, New Jersey.

Ms. Skeete has been very involved in preservation of the Asian American history of the city of Newark. She is a contributing member to the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, where her photo documentation of the Chinatown in Havana, Cuba is in their permanent collection. She has worked with Prof John Kuo Wei Tchen, Director of Asian Pacific American Institute at NYU, where her Newark Chinatown collection is among the permanent archives in NYU Tamiment Library.

Ms. Skeete immigrated to the US as a child, attended the School Of Visual Arts for undergraduate studies in film, video and photography, continued and completed her graduate studies at Tufts University/MIT Graduate program in Anthropological Filmmaking under Jean Rouche, and at Hunter College. She is certified in the business of Arts Administration at Seton Hall University and was an adjunct professor at Rockland Community College, Raritan Valley Community College, New Jersey City University and Rutgers University, Newark until 2009.

Ms. Skeete has exhibited her video and photography works in galleries and museums in the US and abroad including the Museum of Modern Art, the Queens Museum of Art, the Newark Museum, Museum of Contemporary Arts and Crafts in New York City, Biblioteque Nacional de Paris and The Musee D'Art Moderne De La Ville De Paris,  Husby Konsthalle, Stockholm, Sweden, and Estesio Gallery, Beddingstrande, Sweden and The Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, The Zimerli Museum in New Jersey.

 Her photographs, video and multimedia works are in the print collection of the Museum of Modern Art, African American Museum of Life and Culture, Dallas, Texas, Alexander Bonin Gallery in Chelsea, and American Express Corporation, The Bilha Museum in Portugal,  and The Zimerli Museum in New Jersey

She has been a recipient of the Glide Memorial Grant, The Graff Travel Grant, The New Jersey Council on the Humanities Grant and the Melon Grant distributed through New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Humanities program and The Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles. She has been an Artist in Residence at Art In General, The Arts Council of the Essex Area, and has received educational grants and awards for her work with youth and media.

Her work appeared in a major joint exhibition in fall of 2018- winter 2019, at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles and the California Chinese American History Museum.  The exhibition entitled Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art has a catalog written by Alexis Chang and was published by Duke University Press.  In 2020 her work was exhibited in and published in the catalogs of the 24^th Annual Art Ability Exhibition in Bryn Mawr, Pa., and Verum Ultimum Art Gallery in Portland, Or. In 2024 her work will be in an exhibition of Women Photographers at The Zimmerli Museum in New Jersey.