Jacolby Satterwhite

Artist Jacolby Satterwhite performs the first concert version of his visual album Blessed Avenue.

In Blessed Avenue, viewers are introduced to a phantasmagorical world of bodies and machines, exploring such themes as desire and sexual freedom, while drawing inspiration from such diverse sources as gospel, acid house, and modern dance. The work in progress incorporates acapella songs originally composed by Satterwhite’s mother, Patricia, as she struggled with mental illness. They are reimagined into an electronic and visually stirring odyssey. In collaboration with the electronic composer and musician Nick Weiss, this performance features live vocals and new choral arrangements around Satterwhite’s latest musical and animated film.

Part of the performance art series Refiguring the Future.

About the Artists

Jacolby Satterwhite was born in 1986. He was a featured artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and his work has recently been included in the following exhibitions: The Berlin Biennale 9, Human Interests, Whitney Museum of American Art, Disguise, Brooklyn Museum, Electronic Superhighway, White Chapel London (2016), Mirror Stage, Dallas Art Museum (2015), Disguise, Seattle Art Museum (2015), Sundance Film Festival (2014), solo exhibition at OHWOW Gallery, Los Angeles (2014), Step and Repeat, MOCA, Los Angeles (2014), Radical Presence, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2014), solo show at Gavin Brown Enterprise (2018), solo booth at Basel Switzerland Art Fair, 2018, solo show at Stefan Lundgren Gallery, Mallorca (2013); The Matriarch’s Rhapsody, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York (2013), Approximately Infinite Universe, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2013); AIM Biennial, Bronx Museum (2013), Radical Presence, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2012–13), and multiple exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Satterwhite’s work is in public museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Seattle Art Museum.

Nick Weiss is one-half of Teengirl Fantasy, an ever-evolving electronic music duo established in 2009. Weiss participated in the 2014 Red Bull Music Academy in Tokyo under his new solo guise Nightfeelings and co-produced fellow RBMA alum Lafawndah’s 2016 Tan EP on UK label Warp Records. Weiss has collaborated with Satterwhite for the past few years, reimagining his mother Patricia’s acapella songs into an electronic odyssey LP, Blessed Avenue. As a team, PAT creates self-described “Dangerous House” that traverses terrain from hyper-domestic to extra-terrestrial; Patricia’s voice is enveloped in angularly disparate electronic landscapes, ethereal synths grounded in a basement club.

Image Credit

Blessed Avenue album, 2018, Courtesy of PAT (Patricia Satterwhite, Jacolby Satterwhite and Nick Weiss)