ART: A Closer Look at “Spirits Roaming on the Earth”, The First Major Monographic Survey of Queer Artist Jacolby Satterwhite’s Work.

Jacolby Satterwhite, We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other, 2020. HD digital video.

Curated by Elizabeth Chodos, Spirits Roaming on the Earth revisits a decade of Jacolby Satterwhite’s vast multidisciplinary work.

In a variety of other-worldly 3D animated videos, performance art installations, sculptures and electronic dance track, Satterwhite explores everything from modernism and mythology to Queer theory and Black culture. 

Jacolby Satterwhite, Shrines, 2020. HD digital video.

Jacolby Satterwhite, Reifying Desire 6, 2014. HD digital video.

“His wide-ranging practice evokes an essential moral lesson on the healing properties of human creativity as Satterwhite transforms existential uncertainty into a generative engine of resilience, reinvention, and celebration. This ability is something he shares with his late mother and muse, Patricia Satterwhite, who leveraged her own irrepressible creative energy to transform hardship into new worlds of possibility,” says the exhibition page.

Speaking about the thematic motifs and conceptual pillars of the exhibition, Satterwhite said in an interview with i-D: “I feel that what is interesting about my process in making this body of work is the power to be found in using what's around you -- disparate archives, live-action performance footage, drawings that are family heirlooms, archive photography, the internet, personal essays that are like surrealist storyboards. If you're a sculptor, you have the assemblage materials in your studio; if you're a painter, you have oil paint. I've used data as a palette, and I've used that data to try to force these asymmetrical ideas to come together. That's created a subconscious intention in my work that is very autobiographical and authentic, and also speaks to our times in a really strong way. So I think that perhaps the thread that binds it all together is that it demonstrates that certain surrealist practices really have very fruitful and productive ways to speak about the personal sphere and the times we live in”. 

Room for Doubt, 2019
5-channel HD colour video, insulation foam, expanding glue, resin, fairing filler, plywood, faux-leather vinyl, double-faced chiffon, polyester rope, thread, automotive paint and inkjet print on synthetic cotton.

Throne, 2019
LED, Plexiglas, silicone, velvet chairs, plastic plants and HD virtual reality color video with sound.

Jacolby Satterwhite: Spirits Roaming on the Earth, curated by Elizabeth Chodos, runs at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University until December 5, 2021.