GREAT WAS THE ECSTASY, 2023
Copper Speaker Wire (Gullah Geechee Sweetgrass weaving technique), 6 Klipsch Speakers, Black Queer Body in Meditation, 37 - 59 minutes, 2024
An experimental sound experience that delves into the sensorial, ineffable states of ecstatic rapture one encounters in the presence of the divine. This work employs music, narration, and meditation as gateways to engage with the ecstatic. Drawing on the homoerotic narratives of 19th-century Black female orator Rebecca Cox Jackson, the piece intertwines her unwavering accounts, narrated by my voice, of her first divine encounter with atmospheric soundscapes, the transcendental music of Alice Coltrane, and the resonant tones of Korean Buddhist percussion. The sound envelops the space, with two speakers placed near a copper sculpture that captures vibrational waves, creating a new low-frequency hum that shifts with the instruments' tones. This work stands as a monument to the detachment from the physical body, where the experience of rapture becomes beyond the reach of language, rendered utterly unintelligible through words.

Performance still.
Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Jacolby Satterwhite: A METTA PRAYER, Houston, TX 2024


Installation view at Houston African American Research Center (HMAAC), Houston, TX 2024.
Photography by Troy Montes