We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other, Jacolby Satterwhite, 2020
A presentation from the Marieluise Hessel Collection.
Jacolby Satterwhite (b. 1986, South Carolina) is a visionary artist known for building complex and wholly unique animated worlds from scratch. For this monumental work—made for both multi-channel installation and virtual reality—the artist has said that he wanted to create “a cultural survey of our present time.”
Set in 2020, the piece includes Black Lives Matter protest footage filmed in McCarren Park in Brooklyn, alongside found TV footage such as The Jerry Springer Show, all embedded within a dystopian animated world populated by “Black queer fembots” who, in the artist’s words, appear to be thriving against the odds. As with all of Satterwhite’s work, elements of this singular visual world—in this case, dancing trees—are composed from drawings by his late mother, Patricia Satterwhite, and the choreography is modeled on his own in-studio dancing and voguing against a green screen. The piece leads up to a rhythmic memorial to Breonna Taylor, a nurse murdered by police on March 13, 2020. The camera pulls back to reveal vibrant flowers forming her name and portrait as the piece concludes.
We Are in Hell When We Hurt Each Other is part of the series Birds of Paradise and takes inspiration from a record Satterwhite made in collaboration with musician Nick Weiss, based on 155 acapella tracks recorded by his late mother on audiotapes throughout her life.
Jacolby Satterwhite is currently facing a serious health challenge and we encourage visitors to consider Supporting His Recovery and Return to Art.
