Performance | “Jacolby Satterwhite: A Metta Prayer” Thursday, August 15, 2024 6:30 p.m.-8 p.m.
DJ Amarji King
DJ MLE (Emily Areta)
Jacolby Satterwhite, A Metta Prayer, 2023, site-specific, 4-channel multimedia installation: sound, theatrical lighting, high-definition color video, and 3D animation in Autodesk Maya and Unreal Engine, courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. © Jacolby Satterwhite
August 15, 2024
In celebration of Jacolby Satterwhite: A Metta Prayer, two local DJs create an immersive sound experience in response to the exhibition. DJ Amarji King spins a slow and reverberated soundtrack dedicated to her ballroom community. DJ MLE brings a sound performance that incorporates elements of live dub and vinyl samples from her grandfather’s orchestra in Panama, Rumba Casino.
Step into a kaleidoscopic universe of multimedia magic as these local artists blend sonic elements, video, and music—creating a vibrant ode to love and resilience.
This exhibition celebrates humanity in all its glory through computer-generated scenes of life and love. There are occasional instances of adult language and imagery.
Plan Your Visit
- This program is free with Museum admission.
- The performance takes place in Cullinan Hall in the Law Building. Capacity is standing room only, available on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map
About the Performers
Amarji King (She/Her) is a Houston-based DJ, creative, and queer POC advocate. As a leading voice in the region’s underground ballroom and club kid scene, she uses her platform to highlight, employ, and center trans women and rewrite the narratives that underrepresented POC bodies face everyday. Through her work in nightlife she’s seen the powerful affects that real community can have on the lives of its members. As a DJ she runs three residencies that center ballroom, club, and dance music simultaneously across three cities: Houston, Austin, and Dallas. Working in tandem with local queer fundraising collectives, she has made the spaces she occupies not only fresh but impactful. Her work speaks to the necessity of queer safe spaces in the South.
Emily Areta (MLE) is a sound artist, DJ, music producer, and educator from Southwest Houston. Her work is rooted in the idea that sound has the ability to connect and heal communities as well as shape and create future worlds. Through the lens of her own mixed heritage, her work traces lineages and legacies of Black and Indigenous cultural and political resistance in Latin America primarily through sound. In her live sound sets and installations, she blends familial archival material, popular music, and experimental productions to comment on how diaspora, movement, and disconnection have shaped her and the communities around her. She has performed and exhibited works at Lawndale Art Center and Project Row Houses in Houston.
On Thursdays, admission to the MFAH Permanent Collections is free courtesy of Shell USA, Inc.
"Jacolby Satterwhite: A Metta Prayer" was commissioned in 2023 for the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Learning and Interpretation programs receive generous funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services; Samuel H. Kress Foundation; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo; Houston Junior Woman's Club; Sharon G. Dies; Sterling-Turner Foundation; Susan Vaughan Foundation; and additional generous donors.