Jacolby Satterwhite in Conversation with Jada-Amina

Jacolby Satterwhite, Black Luncheon, 2020, animated neon. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Jacolby Satterwhite will discuss his practice with Jada-Amina, artist and lead curator of the Black Harvest Film Festival at SAIC’s Gene Siskel Film Center. 
 

Doors open at 5:45 p.m. Free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Explore the Visiting Artists Program homepage for visitor information, recordings of past events, and more.

Jacolby Satterwhite is celebrated for a conceptual practice addressing crucial themes of labor, consumption, carnality, and fantasy through immersive installation, virtual reality, and digital media. He uses a range of software to produce intricately detailed animations and live-action films of real and imagined worlds populated by the avatars of artists and friends. These animations serve as the stage on which the artist synthesizes the multiple disciplines that encompass his practice, namely illustration, performance, painting, sculpture, photography, and writing. Satterwhite draws from an extensive set of real and fantastical references, guided by mythology, modernism, contemporary visual culture, and video game language to challenge conventions of Western art through a personal and political lens. An equally significant influence is that of his late mother, Patricia Satterwhite, whose ethereal vocals and diagrams for visionary household products serve as the source material within a decidedly complex structure of memory and mythology.

Satterwhite’s work has been presented in numerous exhibitions and festivals internationally, including most recently at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2023); FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2022); Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh (2021); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021); Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2021); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2021); Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2019); Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, (2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019); Minneapolis Institute of Art (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2018); New Museum, New York (2017); Public Art Fund, New York (2017); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017); and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017). 

Satterwhite was awarded the United States Artists Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellowship in 2016. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Satterwhite has collaborated with several musicians, including Solange Knowles in 2019 on her visual album When I Get Home, The 1975 in 2020 on the music video for “Having No Head,” and Perfume Genius in 2022 on his album, Ugly Season. Satterwhite was awarded a public art commission in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Public Art Fund to inaugurate Lincoln Center’s new David Geffen Hall, which debuted October 2022 in New York.

Jada-Amina is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker, born and based on the South Side of Chicago. Their practice is deeply inspired by the preservation, archival, and homemaking practices of Black matriarchs. For Jada-Amina, remembrance serves as a profound ancestral technology, bridging cosmic currents and the ravines of our past. Their body of work, including sound, video, and collage, explores themes of liminality and collective consciousness by transposing cultural data from both familial archives and the public domain.

Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation’s Conversations at the Edge series and SAIC Galleries. 

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and hearing assisted devices are available. For additional access requests, including ASL interpretation or audio description, visit saic.edu/access. 
 

Jacolby Satterwhite: Spirits Roaming on the Earth will be on view at the SAIC Galleries September 11–December 2. This survey exhibition is organized by the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University and curated by Director Elizabeth Chodos.