Jacolby Satterwhite
born 1986, Columbia, SC
lives in New York City
Dawn is an ambitious multimedia project by Jacolby Satterwhite that includes drawings gathered from residents of Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood; an immersive video-game environment translating these drawings into a 3D world; a two-channel film installation with sound; and a layered graphic wallpaper, maypole painting, and more. Taken together, the project offers a 360-degree view of Satterwhite’s unique creative process as well as a milestone in a long-term dialogue between the artist and the residents of Fairfax.
The installation is in dialogue with a previous work commissioned in 2021 by The Cleveland Clinic for which Satterwhite was asked to conceive of a public artwork for its new BioRepository facility in the neighborhood. Working with Cleveland artists RA Washington and LaToya Kent, he solicited texts and drawings from Fairfax residents responding to the prompt, “What does Utopia look like to you?” Their creations—nearly one hundred unique drawings—formed the inspiration for the successive stages of Satterwhite’s work. Satterwhite transforms this material into the media on view by painstakingly digitizing and animating the drawings by hand.
In bringing his wide-ranging artistic process to both the Clinic and the Cleveland Institute of Art, Satterwhite’s work offers a vision for how emergent forms of art-making can be boundary-crossing and multi-disciplinary yet socially-rooted.
Cleveland Clinic
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2021, This project was commissioned by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and with community support from Karamu House.
Jacolby Satterwhite. Dawn, 2022. Mixed media. Dimensions vary. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, with support from the VIA Art Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2022, Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, with support from the VIA Art Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2021. Color HD video and 3D animation with artist-designed wallpaper on masonry wall, 22 minutes 30 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. This project was commissioned by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and with community support from Karamu House. © Jacolby Satterwhite. Photography by Field Studio.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2021. Color HD video and 3D animation with artist-designed wallpaper on masonry wall, 22 minutes 30 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. This project was commissioned by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and with community support from Karamu House. © Jacolby Satterwhite. Photography by Field Studio.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2021. Color HD video and 3D animation with artist-designed wallpaper on masonry wall, 22 minutes 30 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. This project was commissioned by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and with community support from Karamu House. © Jacolby Satterwhite. Photography by Field Studio.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2021. Color HD video and 3D animation with artist-designed wallpaper on masonry wall, 22 minutes 30 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. This project was commissioned by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and with community support from Karamu House. © Jacolby Satterwhite. Photography by Field Studio.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2021. Color HD video and 3D animation with artist-designed wallpaper on masonry wall, 22 minutes 30 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. This project was commissioned by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and with community support from Karamu House. © Jacolby Satterwhite. Photography by Field Studio.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2021. Color HD video and 3D animation with artist-designed wallpaper on masonry wall, 22 minutes 30 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. This project was commissioned by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and with community support from Karamu House. © Jacolby Satterwhite. Photography by Field Studio.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Dawn, 2021. Color HD video and 3D animation with artist-designed wallpaper on masonry wall, 22 minutes 30 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. This project was commissioned by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and with community support from Karamu House. © Jacolby Satterwhite. Photography by Field Studio.