Trailer for We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other (2020)
Trailer for We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other (2020)
Édouard Manet
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
1865-1866
“We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other” is the latest installment in the "Birds in Paradise" suite. Presented both as HD video and 360-degree virtual reality, it is constructed as a hybridized world that shows the ongoing battle and self-protection of the Black femme body in a queer, pastoral tableau. The sharpness of his technical skill coupled with an honesty to the technology reveals Satterwhite’s strongest work to date.
“Another layer of the analogue to digital transformation that characterizes Satterwhite’s work can be found in his follow-up work to the ‘Reifying Desire’ series, the multi-episode music-video film Patricia (2016/17),” Omar Kholeif wrote at the start of the suite’s creation. “Here the artist took a capella recordings that his mother put down on consumer-grade equipment from the American retail store K-Mart and re-composed them digitally with the help of electronic-music impresario Nick Weiss. The result features Afro-futurism sounds blended with footage of men making love, creating an atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic world where queer desire is able to manifest in any way that it pleases – from S&M to self-love.” [1]
The chilling soundtrack, commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, couches his mother’s vocals in a trip-hop, acid-house mix of melodies that feel prophetic in their lyrics on love, healing and growth.
1. Kohleif, Omar "Jacolby Satterwhite." in The Artists Who Will Change The World, 54. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc., 2018.
Installation view of Throne (2019) at Fabric Workshop
Installation view of Living Room (2020) and Flying in Paradise, All Above the Business (2020)
Useful as a storyboard for the moving image, the UV pigment prints— their backing aluminum for more saturated and textured inks— precede the making of the video. Satterwhite photographed cultural icons, Bethann Hardison and Dev Hynes, from commissioned magazine work, placing them as central figures in the work.
About Jacolby Satterwhite
b. 1986, Columbia, SC
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 film 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 references, guided by queer theory, modernism 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 and ethereal vocals serve as the source material within a decidedly complex structure of memory and mythology.
Jacolby Satterwhite was born in 1986 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. Satterwhite’s work has been presented in numerous exhibitions both in the United States and in Europe, including most recently at Fabric Workshop & Museum, Philadelphia (2019); Pioneer Works, New York (2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019); the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2019); the 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 Art, San Francisco (2017); and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017). He was awarded the United States Artist 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. In 2019, Satterwhite collaborated with Solange Knowles on her visual album, “When I Get Home."
Dr Omar Kholeif, FRSA is a writer, curator, cultural historian, strategist and university professor who has curated more than 100 exhibitions of visual art, architecture and digital culture globally. He has authored or published more than two dozen books. He is currently a senior official at Sharjah Art Foundation, Government of Sharjah UAE. He is currently at work on a number of books, one of which is part of a three-part trilogy on mental health.