Jacolby Satterwhite
Country Ball 1989-2012
12:38 min

Jacolby Satterwhite’s digital universe in Country Ball 1989-2012 is suffused with references to queer ballroom culture and its simultaneous celebration of community and individuality.

The artist has created the virtual scenography from his own green screen performances, which are replicated seemingly infinitely in a fantastical computer-generated landscape. This constructed world is juxtaposed with home video footage of a family cookout honouring his mother Patricia Satterwhite and her sisters for Mother’s Day in 1989. The two videos play side-by-side to a soundtrack of ambient chatter and music from the expanded family gathering. Physical reality inserts itself in the digital world via animations of his mother’s handmade drawings of cake designs, drinking vessels and cars. Similarly, early inspiration and encouragement for the vogue-like moves in the digital realm can be traced in the children’s’ joyful routines on their makeshift, outdoor dancefloor, surrounded and supported by older members of their close community. This intertwining of the real and the virtual underlines the embodied nature of memory, self-expression and a sense of belonging.

Jacolby Satterwhite (b. 1986) is an American artist, based in New York. His work will also be included in the upcoming exhibition programme at MUNCH.

This artwork is part of the online exhibition CADS #3: Queer desires (20 May - 18 June 2021)