This exhibition maps conceptual artist Jacolby Satterwhite’s extraordinary creative trajectory across multiple materials, genres, and modes of thinking. Drawing on a broad set of real and fantastical references and diverse influences that include modernism, video gaming, queer theory, mythology, and Black culture, Satterwhite creates digital worlds of resilience, reinvention, and celebration. His intricately detailed animations and live action films of real and imagined worlds—populated by the avatars of Satterwhite and his friends—serve as the stage for the artist’s surreal and poetic world-building.

In the first major survey of his work, CAM will present a wide range of Satterwhite’s media in the form of 3D-animated films, immersive audio and video installations, sculptures, and new media works. The exhibition will be accompanied by the published monograph Jacolby Satterwhite: How lovly is me being as I am, edited by Elizabeth Chodos and Andrew Durbin with narration by Sasha Bonét; essays by Malik Gaines, Jane Ursula Harris, and Legacy Russell; an interview with the artist by Kimberly Drew; and book design by Sonia Yoon.

Jacolby Satterwhite (b. 1986, Columbia, South Carolina; lives and works in Brooklyn) 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 and festivals internationally, including most recently at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University (2021); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021); the Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2021); the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2021); The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2019); Pioneer Works, New York (2019); the 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); La Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2018); the New Museum, New York (2017); the Public Art Fund, New York (2017); the San Francisco Museum of Art (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; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the 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.

Jacolby Satterwhite: Spirits Roaming on the Earth is organized by the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University and curated by Elizabeth Chodos, Director. The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis exhibition is organized by Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator.

The exhibition is generously supported in part by the Whitaker Foundation.

Image: Jacolby Satterwhite, We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other, 2020. Video still from HD digital video. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.