Satch Hoyt has developed a robust interactive practice that encompasses the power of sound, sculpture, and performance to confront the historical narratives associated with colonialism and postcolonialism. Hoyt has cultivated this multimodal approach as an active platform that highlights and celebrates how the African diaspora has remained interconnected with sounds rooted in Africa.

Hoyt has developed a sophisticated approach to art-making that seeks to emphasise how the music, sonics, call and response have served as a cultural suture within the African diaspora that fuses Black culture together. Satch Hoyt also utilises his practices as a vehicle to investigate concerns related to class, race, and identity politics in relation to the cultural hybridity of people from the African diaspora.

Hoyt further pushes the boundaries of how the viewer comprehends the power of audio with everyday objects like buckets and sculptures that function as percussive instruments or installations involving soundscapes, in an effort to evaluate our understanding of sonics permeating the African diaspora. For AB7, Hoyt will be presenting several pieces, including Kush Yard Totem and Sonic Transmission. Both are immersive pieces that redefine the viewers’ understanding of sound. By tapping into themes that undergird the ideals of Afrofuturism, Satch Hoyt creates transcendent sound waves through his work, which points to the ideas of spirituality that are carried through music and preserved throughout the African diaspora.

Kush Yard Totem, 2011-2021
Sound installation
Plastic buckets, steel armature, audio components
Dimensions variable, 3’32’’
Courtesy of the artist

Sonic Transmission, 2015
Sound installation
Wood, 15 microphones, cables, audio components, 127 x 2.54 cm, height variable
Courtesy of the artist