We move through computer-generated worlds, a nightclub, and oceanic coastal areas in Satterwhite’s imaginative works, tapping into sources ranging from Nigerian mythology, video games, pop culture, and art history. Via virtual reality, videos, and neon, the artist shows us how dance and music can be used as shields by marginalized persons against their treatment by society.

The exhibition extends from a nightclub in Roskilde as far as Holstebro, where the work We Are in Hell When We Hurt Each Other can be experienced as a satellite at HFKD Art Center, allowing people in both West and East Denmark to enjoy Jacolby Satterwhite’s works.

Peace in the world of fantasy
Jacolby Satterwhite is known for creating mythical digital worlds, placing in them several avatars inspired by art history such as Édouard Manet’s figures and Titian’s paintings as well as pop icons such as Trina, letting them perform together with video footage of White racists and Jacolby Satterwhite himself.

They often move to electronic rhythms, showing us modes of existence as both Black and queer persons in response to the surrounding world. By resorting to imaginary worlds, Jacolby Satterwhite creates room for action, resistance, and hope, providing spaces in which marginalized persons can exist. Similarly, his mother, Patricia Satterwhite, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, found peace in the world of fantasy where, during periods of despair and joblessness, she designed household products in the hope of patenting her ideas.

Satterwhite has transformed his mother’s drawings into 3D animations as a general feature in his works, and her homemade recordings have become electronic music made with the producer Nick Weiss, providing the soundtrack to all the works, giving his mother’s calming voice a divine and ubiquitous character.

New realities
In Jacolby Satterwhite’s artworks, horses fly, and uteruses are transformed into machines. His dreamlike worlds eradicate the boundary between reality and fantasy and digital bodies vis-à-vis bodies of flesh and blood. Why not speculate on new realities and use African myths when something as fictional as racial difference still tends to dominate world society?

Video: Jabolby Satterwhite, Moments of Silence, 2019