Satch Hoyt’s solo exhibition, Afro-Sonic Mapping Chapter 4, is an installation that integrates two major bodies of work, his series of Afro-Sonic Mapping paintings and a new Un-Muting sound composition. In different ways, both explore the histories of trans-Atlantic slavery and how museum collections hold these colonial legacies. Hoyt’s practice as a visual artist, musician and composer explores sonic and visual culture as a space where identity takes shape and histories become seen, heard, and reimagined.
In his Afro-Sonic Mapping paintings, Hoyt charts voyages ranging from colonial slave ship to Afro-futuristic spaceship, depicting both historical and fantastical ‘Black Atlantic’ journeys. The artist describes his paintings as cartographic depictions, un-fixed graphic scores, and cosmic constellations that map “the eternal migration of the Afro-sonic signifier” – the languages, sounds and stories carried by enslaved people across the Middle Passage. These come together into what Hoyt describes as a “mnemonic network of sound”. The paintings mark a defiance of time and displacement, beginning with the forced voyages from the African continent of the millions captured and enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade.
These journeys are mapped in many of Hoyt’s paintings which show the African continent on the right-hand side and the Caribbean and Americas on the left. A utopian planet floats at the top in some paintings, alluding to the rich culture of Afro-futurist literature and music, with the vertical axis representing what Hoyt describes as a journey of spiritual resolve from “slave ship to spaceship”.
Un-muting Beyond Misspelt Borders is a newly commissioned sound work composed, produced and performed by Hoyt. The starting point for the work was a recording session that took place at the British Museum in October 2023, where collection care staff listened to Hoyt playing historical African instruments usually preserved in silence in Western museum collections. The recordings were then reworked by Hoyt in a studio and layered with further recordings of African and Western instruments from his own collection. For the artist, this is both a creative and political act that awakens and celebrates the hybridity, resilience and creativity of the Black diaspora.
Join us for the opening event on Friday 3 Oct (6–9pm) with an artist performance at 8.15pm. Curator’s Tours for Afro-Sonic Mapping Chapter 4 will be on 10 Oct and 14 Nov (1–2pm).
Afro-Sonic Mapping Chapter 4 is supported by the Goethe-Institut London. Un-Muting Beyond Misspelt Borders was commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary with the support of Nottingham Contemporary Commissioning Circle.
