Jacolby Satterwhite
Jacolby Satterwhite, Reifying Desire 6, 2014. Video, color, sound; 24:04 min., looped. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Film, Video, and New Media Committee 2015.58 © Jacolby Satterwhite
Born 1986 in Columbia, SC
Lives and Works in New York, NY
In the most recent installment in Jacolby Satterwhite’s Reifying Desire video series, on view in the 2014 Biennial, the artist continues his exploration of 3-D animation and digital space as a utopian realm to explore memory and personal history. Combining a virtual, dreamlike space with live action, Satterwhite’s digital avatar, freed from the constraints of gravity, performs movements drawn from voguing, martial arts, and choreographer William Forsythe’s (b. 1949) dance techniques. He occupies a surreal, science fiction–inspired environment constructed of elements gleaned from his mother’s drawings of common domestic objects and luxury products and her scrawled texts accompanying them—all transformed into floating three-dimensional architectural forms. As his virtual camera whips around at impossible angles, Satterwhite creates startling connections among his mother’s images, his own body, and a range of fantastical structures, art historical references, and vividly rendered supporting characters. Satterwhite’s video constructs a magical arena in which to imagine a new spatial awareness, one that responds to the shifting relationships between the life of the mind, the world of images, and the physical realm of bodies and objects.
In the News
Interview: "Artist Turns Mother's Old Sketches Of Inventions Into Surreal Performance Art"
—Huffington Post
