Jacolby Satterwhite’s First Major Survey Opens at SAIC Galleries

Jacolby Satterwhite, "We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other" (2020), HD digital video (image courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York)

This fall, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s SAIC Galleries exhibits the first major survey of contemporary artist Jacolby Satterwhite. Jacolby Satterwhite: Spirits Roaming on the Earth maps a holistic view of the artist’s multidisciplinary and visionary practice, bringing together a wide range of works from the past 13 years. The exhibition is open through December 2.

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 intended to serve as escapist spaces of freedom and desire.

The exhibition, curated by SAIC alum Elizabeth Chodos (Dual MA 2008), first premiered at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University in 2021. Since then, it has also traveled to the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. This iteration at SAIC Galleries will feature several pieces by Satterwhite not included in the previous exhibitions.

On November 14 Satterwhite will be in conversation with Jada-Amina (BFA 2018), artist and lead curator of the Black Harvest Film Festival at SAIC’s Gene Siskel Film Center, as part of SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program and Conversations at the Edge. Learn more.

SAIC Galleries is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. Please contact SAIC Galleries at exhibitions-saic@saic.edu if you are interested in scheduling a tour or have any questions.