Reifying Desire

Reifying Desire is a six-part video series by artist Jacolby Satterwhite, which was on view in the 2014 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Satterwhite created 230 3D modeled versions of his body, animated figures, and his mothers drawings. He performs in this "utopian and non-political space", combining his public reactions to art history, political histories, and pop culture with his mother's private drawings and inventions.^[1]

Satterwhite’s mother was schizophrenic and stayed home, unemployed, up until his teenage years. As a form of therapy, his mother drew pencil-on-paper drawings and diagrams for her potential product ideas after being inspired by late-night television infomercials. The drawings allowed for a future promise of financial security if they were able to be projected out into the public. Satterwhite uses these drawings, along with the scrawled-out text accompanying them, and turns them into three-dimensional objects for his video series. Using Autodesk Maya, a 3D-rendering program, the images are digitally traced by hand using a stylus to be then placed into a larger virtual landscape. Satterwhite pairs these drawings with other photographs, family videos, and his own pieces of dance and performance. The culmination of these elements results in an experience exploring memory, personal history, surrealism, narrative, psychology, and reality.^[2]

Satterwhite’s digital avatar performs dance movements in this digitally created utopian realm, combining live action with digital creation. He combines elements of choreographer William Forsythe’s (b. 1949) dance techniques with anything from elements of martial arts and voguing. The body moves at impossible angles, freed from gravitational pull. His mother’s images are connected with his own body, art historical references, digitally rendered bodies, and fantastical structures. The special awareness of the physical realm existing between bodies and objects are reimagined and transformed, along with the world of images, and the shifting relationships between them.^[3]

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