Jacolby Satterwhite: Spirits Roaming on the Earth

SAIC Galleries is pleased to present Jacolby Satterwhite: Spirits Roaming on the Earth, opening Monday, September 11. Satterwhite’s first major survey, the exhibition maps a holistic view of the artist’s truly multidisciplinary and visionary practice, bringing together a wide range of works from the past 13 years.

Satterwhite is best known for his fantastical, layered, and exuberant world building realized through video, performance, 3D animation, virtual reality, painting, sculpture, prints, and music. Drawing on his lexicon that is informed by mythology, video gaming, and dance, as well as his own queer, Black perspective, he interweaves art historical motifs with contemporary visual culture to create Afrofuturistic universes that serve as escapist spaces of freedom, desire, power, and inclusivity. 

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. 

This exhibition features contemporary art with adult content and is intended for mature audiences.

Please join us for the following Public Programs:

Exhibition Tour by Elizabeth Chodos (Dual MA 2008), curator of the exhibition and director of the Miller ICA at Carnegie Mellon University
Monday, September 11 at 11:15 a.m. 

Opening Reception at SAIC Galleries
Monday, September 11 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Motion Capture Workshop at SAIC Galleries, with SAIC faculty Anneli Goeller and artists Elisabete Yoon Ju Seonwoo, aka Kerberus (BFA 2023), and WooYeon Kim (BFA 2022)
Wednesday, October 4 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Jacolby Satterwhite in Conversation with Jada-Amina at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Fullerton Hall. Part of the Visiting Artists Program and Conversations at the Edge. Tuesday, November 14 at 6:00 p.m.

SAIC Galleries is free and open to the public Monday to Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Public-issued state ID is required to enter. 

To schedule tours of the exhibition, please email sboris@saic.edu.

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 Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, TX (2023); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2022); FRONT Triennial, Cleveland, OH (2022); Okayama Art Summit, Okayama, Japan (2021-2); Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf (2021); Miller Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University (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 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, among others. Satterwhite has collaborated with several musicians, including Solange Knowles in 2019 on her visual album, “When I Get Home,” and Perfume Genus in 2022 on his album, “Ugly Season.” In October 2022, in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Public Art Fund, he debuted a public art commission to inaugurate Lincoln Center’s new David Geffen Hall in New York. Satterwhite was awarded The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York’s Great Hall Commission, opening October 2, 2023.