Jacolby Satterwhite: Shrines
Jacolby Satterwhite, Shrines, 2020
HD video and 3D animation, colour, sound, 13 min 37 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf
About the Work
Shrines (2020) is a single-channel 3D animation and video, and the final film of the six-part series ‘Birds in Paradise’ (2018–20). The video is accompanied by a virtual-reality HD video of the same name. A recurring visual theme is Satterwhite’s version of the composition The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio, depicting Thomas, the apostle who was sceptical of the resurrected Jesus, putting his finger into Jesus’s wound.
Figures such as hip hop icons Trina and Dev Hynes, as well as Whoopi Goldberg as Celie in the film adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple (1985), make appearances above multiple television screens that play images of Ku Klux Klan members lighting torches. Purple appears in much of Satterwhite’s work; it is the colour of womanism, further aligning his work with the Black femme experience as he channels Ms. Celie in a message to his fellow countrymen: ‘Until you do right by me, everything you think about is gonna crumble!’
About the Artist
Jacolby Satterwhite (b. 1986, Columbia, USA) is an artist who lives and works in New York. 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. His current solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is on view, and recently, his immersive six-channel video commission, A Metta Prayer(2023–24), was shown in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall, as well as at Haus der Kunst, Munich (2023).
About ICA x FRIEZE FILM LONDON
Frieze Film returns to Frieze London in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The curated selection of seven films will be screened throughout Frieze Week, 8–13 October, at the ICA and on frieze.com, streaming online until 31 October.
The programme showcases films from galleries with a focus on early-career and under-exposed artists. This year’s films were selected by a jury including Steven Cairns (Head of Artistic Programme at the ICA), Myriam Mouflih (Curator, Writer and Programmer at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival) and Guilherme Blanc (Artistic Director of Batalha Centro de Cinema and curator of independent cinema and moving image) for the second year.
