Jacolby Satterwhite

Satterwhite was born in Columbia, South Carolina. As a child, he would watch Janet Jackson's video anthology VHS tape everyday after school. Music videos by Deee Lite, Björk, Janet, Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, Michael Jackson and Madonna also influenced his aesthetic. He began working with technology at the age of 11 when he got his first personal computer.

Satterwhite received his BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 and he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture the next year.[1] He received a MFA University of Pennsylvania in 2010. Satterwhite studied painting at both schools. It was not until graduate school at Penn that Satterwhite began combining his work in video with 3D animation tools.

His work often utilizes his mother's schematic drawings/inventions of ordinary objects influenced by consumer culture, medicine, fashion, Surrealism, mathematics, sex, philosophy, astrology, and matrilineal concerns.[2] His series Reifying Desire was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Combining 3D animation and live action, the work explores themes of memory and personal history in a virtual dreamlike environment.[3] Satterwhite has also shown/performed in group exhibitions including at MoMA PS1, the Smithsonian, The Kitchen, Rush Arts Gallery, and Exit Art.[4] He is a contributing director for the music video that accompanied Solange's 2019 visual album When I Get Home.[5]

Satterwhite's work is in the public collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Kiasma, and the San Jose Museum of Art.

In 2012 Satterwhite presented an exhibition entitled Jacolby Satterwhite at the Hudson D. Walker Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The next year, Satterwhite's exhibition Island of Treasure at Mallorca Landings in Palma De Mallorca, Spain, included the Reifying Desire video series, which was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.[6]>[7] Satterwhite exhibited works in the Matriarch's Rhapsody in exhibitions in Triforce at The Bindery Projects in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[8] The same year Satterwhite exhibited works from the Matriarch's Rhapsody in exhibitions including his first solo show in New York, The Matriarch's Rhapsody, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, NY in January,[9] The House of Patricia, Satterwhite at the Mallorca Landings Gallery in Palme De Mallorca, Spain in February,[10] and Grey Lines at Recess Activities in New York, NY in August.[11]

In 2014 Satterwhite showed work in the exhibition "WPA Hothouse Video: Jacolby Satterwhite," curated by Julie Chae, Capitol Skyline Hotel. Chae described Satterwhite's work as "visually spectacular, strange, and boldly combines humor with darker elements." The exhibition included the work Country Ball, which is in the public collection of the Seattle Art Museum[12][13] In the same year, Satterwhite had an exhibition at OhWOW Gallery (now Morán Morán), Los Angeles, California titled How Lovely Is Me Being As I Am, the title of which he attributed to his mother's unique use of language.[14]

In 2015 and 2016, Satterwhite was part of the traveling exhibition Disguise: Masks and Global African Art. This exhibition was a collaboration between the Seattle Art Museum (on display from June 18 to September 7, 2015 in Seattle, Washington) and the Brooklyn Museum which displayed it from April 29-September 18, 2016 in Brooklyn.[15] This exhibition focused on African masquerade and how the power of the mask and costume is a proactive and playful way to engage in conversation about current social problems like class, gender, and power and to give incite into the future. The exhibition presented contemporary and historical works from the Seattle Art Museum that worked in dialogue together and were a range of mediums from video installation to photography and sculpture.[16]

In 2019, Satterwhite had his first solo museum exhibition at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, titled, "Jacolby Satterwhite: Room for Living."[17]

• 2016 United States Artists Fellowship
• 2013 Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant
• 2013 Arts Matters Grant
• 2013-14 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Artist in Residence
• 2013 Recess Art, Sessions Residency
• 2012-13 Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship 2nd Year
• 2012 Headlands Center for the Arts - Artist in Residence
• 2011-12 Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship 1st Year
• 2011 Electronic Television Center Finishing Funds Grant
• 2011 Center for Photography, Woodstock
• 2011 Van Lier Grant, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Studio LLC program
• 2011 Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellowship
• 2010-11 Harvestworks Artist In Residence, New York, NY
• 2010 Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship
• 2009 Cosby Fellowship to Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture
• 2007 Grand Prize Winner for Driven exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute's S. Dillon Ripley Center[18]

• Jacolby.com
• https://web.archive.org/web/20150507101411/http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/2014Biennial/JacolbySatterwhite
• http://rhizome.org/editorial/2014/jan/9/artist-profile-jacolby-satterwhite/
• https://vimeo.com/user2947668