Jacolby Satterwhite Directs Epic ‘Pygmalion’s Ugly Season’ for Perfume Genius

Renowned visual artist Jacolby Satterwhite has created a 30 minute film featuring Mike Hadreas aka Perfume Genius and the music of Ugly Season, the artist’s new album released on June 17th via Matador Records.

Entitled Pygmalion’s Ugly Season, the film - both stunning and surreal -  is out now.

Jacolby, whose work is in the collections of MoMA, Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art, has also collaborated with Solange and Dev Hynes. 

At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Mike offered the now-completed recordings up to Satterwhite, known for his immersive multidisciplinary technique that fuses live video, 3D animation.  

“I gave him free reign,” says Mike. “We're both the same age, I feel very aligned with Jacolby when it comes to taste and certain pop culture obsessions. There is also a spiritual harmony between us in the way we approach work and the similar energetic spaces we want to inhabit, realise and share."

“Mike and I are both writing scripts,” explains Jacolby. “My visual narrative serendipitously mirrors the lyrical direction in his music; it’s a rare, like-minded bond. It’s a creation myth. How do you architecturally mould and render an idealised version of utopia? It’s about making something that you desire so beyond your scope that it’s hard to grapple into a concrete form.”

‘Pygmalion’s Ugly Season’ was first screened as a site specific installation at the Guggenheim Museum Young Collectors Party co-hosted by Jacolby.

‘Pygmalion’s Ugly Season’ is a version and iterative fragment of an upcoming large scale museum installation being released later this summer.