Jacolby Satterwhite, Visiting Artist Lecture 2024

Jacolby Satterwhite gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about his vast, interdisciplinary practice which includes– but is not limited to–animation, drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, and installation. With the history of painting in particular, Satterwhite talks about the propagandistic ways that paint was used in 16th century Europe to promote the Protestant and Catholic faith: painters were commissioned to teach the illiterate to follow kings and queens. It is these kinds of histories that Satterwhite explores in his work. Satterwhite also works with the archive of his mothers poetry, music and drawings as a way to create new forms of interdisciplinary and performance art. Satterwhite specifically speaks about the need to work with old archives in order to create something new. Other major themes in Satterwhite’s work include his relationship to autobiography, ritual, and voodooism. Satterwhite then talks about the importance of utilizing craft from ancient practices as a way to figure out what the line is between contemporary American practices and African diasporic practices. Satterwhite explores this line by utilizing craft from ancient practices such as beading, sewing, dance, costume, and masquerade in his work. Satterwhite also touches upon his interest in animism, phenomenology, the surrealism embedded in the isolated American south, black abstraction, black feeling, esoteric thought, and black avant-garde beings.