Finding Home Again

Jacolby Satterwhite (American, b. 1986) creates immersive installations, digital media, and virtual reality works centered around labor, consumption, sex, and fantasy. His animations are the result of explorations in drawing, performance, painting, sculpture, photography, writing, and sound. He combines real and imagined objects, people, places, along with personal mythologies, anecdotes, and experiences, to create epic new worlds, where the artist can be seen dancing and interacting with avatars of friends and family members.

Satterwhite’s exhibition at the Van Every/Smith Galleries focuses on his digital animated series, Birds in Paradise, which features a mythological, queer universe inspired by pop culture, African folklore, ritual, video games, and personal narratives. Satterwhite notes that the works are “a reflection on being reborn and re-centering yourself, finding home again.” For the artist, liberation, rebirth, and healing of the black, queer body is achieved through movement and sound.

Much of Satterwhite’s work over the last decade may be considered a posthumous collaboration with his mother, Patricia, who used creative practices such as drawing and singing to cope with her schizophrenia. Patricia aspired to be both a pop star and an inventor. As such, many of the musical recordings and drawings she left behind are woven into Satterwhite’s work. For example, her voice is an integral component in the Birds in Paradise suite, as well as in a double LP album “Love Will Find a Way Home” that Satterwhite created with Nick Weiss under the band name PAT. Though Patricia sent drawings of her proposed consumer goods to shopping networks and patent offices, none were ever realized during her lifetime. Instead, they take form in her son’s animations, and at times, in the physical world as neon installations, 3-D prints, and more.

Satterwhite was born in Columbia, South Carolina. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Arts, Baltimore and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. His work has been presented in numerous exhibitions both in the United States and in Europe, including at FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH; Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany; Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Pioneer Works, NY; Fabric Workshop & Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; New Museum, NY; and Public Art Fund, NY; among others. His work is included in many prestigious collections including Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. Satterwhite has collaborated with several musicians, including Solange Knowles in 2019 on her visual album, “When I Get Home,” and Perfume Genus in 2022 on his album, “Ugly Season.” In October 2022, he debuted his new public art commission in NY in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Public Art Fund to inaugurate Lincoln Center’s new David Geffen Hall.

Please note the exhibition contains nudity and content that may not be appropriate for younger audiences. The exhibition includes projections and some flashing light/imagery in a darkened space.

Exhibitions, programming, and catalogue made possible by the support of the Herb Jackson and Laura Grosch Gallery Endowment, and Davidson College Friends of the Arts.

For additional resources for the artist and his work, click here.

View the exhibition here.