SAY IT LOUD!
28Th October 2016
Visual artist, musician and composer, living between London, New York and Berlin.
Satch Hoyt as a large production in various media, painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation were he often incorporates sound, using music as a lens, he investigates issues that delves to transform environments, creatively reusing existing materials.
Hoyt is particularly interested in the African Diaspora and its complex and global consequences, foregrounding musicality and aurality in his visual art.
SAY IT LOUD! is an interactive installation and literal platform for uncensored expression that investigates the concept of freedom of speech, built on a pyramidal book pile of Colonialism, the African diasporas and politics in general; where the site specific (in this case Portugal) will be the basis of the bibliographical selection of the installed object. On a podium-shaped stack arranged around a stepladder. Accompanying the installation of James Brown chorus “Say It Loud! I’m Black and I’m Proud!,” altered to mute the word “black” in which Hoyt engages the viewers as participants and collaborators inviting them to use the microphone (installed on the top of the stack) as opponent of the silenced black voices, to step up and perform their own concept of pride and empowerment.
BIOGRAPHY
Satch Hoyt, born in London of British and African-Jamaican ancestry, is currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. He makes sculptures and installations accompanied with sound, as well as paintings and drawings. There is a dichotomy in the genres that define two sides of the same coin: a dual and complementary reflection on the African Diaspora and its multi-fold consequences. The sculptural trope in Hoyt’s work addresses the facts on the ground, so to speak, of black experience, while the drawings tap into a spirit of fantasy, refuge, and transcendence – they are vehicles for an imaginative journey beyond the obduracy and oppressiveness of history. With regards to his musical accomplishments Satch Hoyt has composed a number of songs with Grace Jones; noteworthy, is 7 Day Weekend which is on the triple platinum soundtrack album of the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang. Hoyt also worked with master percussionist composer Stomu Yamashta, played flute on Louise Bourgeois’ OTTE, and is flautist – percussionist in Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber since 2001. Hoyt has sung and played on numerous recordings and has recently recorded a new album in Berlin, Battlefields of Peace, under the pseudonym Pharoah Dreams which includes guest musicians Julia Kent (Anthony and the Johnsons), Cass Lewis (Skunk Anansie), Earl Harvin (Me’shell Ndegocello) and Dave Smoota Smith (TV on the Radio). The album is co-written and co-produced with Dirk Leyers.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
“My current works mine what I term the Afro Sonic Signifier – I argue that this mnemonic network of sound is a primary element that has kept the transnational African Diaspora intact. Through research of African diaspora histories, mythologies and cosmologies I employ a plethora of materials such as boxing gloves, raw cotton, police batons, drum sticks, bull whips, burnt electric guitars, used 1970’s tennis racquets, 45 rpm vinyl records and guitar plectrums, as well as drawings and paintings. These works are accompanied by self composed sonic texts (sound-scapes): a form of sonic cartography to map out historical and fantastical Afro-futuristic Black Atlantic journeys – voyages from Slave Ship to Space Ship. Through research, narrative, imagination, myth and fantasy I persevere to contribute to the ongoing construction of a new all-inclusive Black cultural identity.
Selected exhibitions and projects include, The Beautiful Game, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014); Rehearsal at Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah GA (2013); Radical Presence, Black Performance in contemporary Art, Grey Art Gallery, New York University (2013); Newtopia: The State of Human Rights, Museum for the Holocaust and Human Rights, Mechelen Belgium (2012); Radical Presence, CAMH Texas (2012); The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, ICA Boston (2011); Art is a Combat Sport, Museum of Fine Art, Calais, France (2011), The Global Africa Project, Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2010). Hoyt has participated in the San Juan Triennial, Puerto Rico (2009); the Beijing Biennial, China (2008); Infinite Island, Contemporary Caribbean Art, Brooklyn Museum (2007), Equatorial Rhythms, The Stenersen Museum, Norway (2007); Black Light White Noise, Sound and Light in Contemporary Art, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2007); the Tate Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, U.K. (2004); Open House: Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art (2004); Brown v. Board of Education, Gallery 138, New York (2004); Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2003) traveling to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2004) and the Barbican Art Gallery, London, U.K. (2004); The Squared Circle: Boxing in Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2003); Body Power/Power Play, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany (2002) and SportCult, apexart, New York (2001).