Ebony G. Patterson represented by Monique Meloche Gallery and Hales Gallery

Ebony G. Patterson, Studies for a vocabulary of loss XIV, 2024

Courtesy of the artist, Monique Meloche Gallery Chicago, and Hales Gallery New York/London

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Ebony G. Patterson's expansive practice addresses visibility and invisibility, through explorations of class,  race, gender, youth culture, pageantry and acts of violence in the context of "postcolonial" spaces. With  the strong sensibility of a painter, Patterson works across multiple media - including tapestry, photography,  video, sculpture, drawing and installation - united by her consistent visual language and intention. Each  work is intricately embellished and densely layered, in order to draw the viewer closer and to question  how we engage in the act of looking. Patterson states: "I aim to elevate those who have been deemed  invisible/un-visible as a result of inherited colonial social structures, by incorporating their words, thoughts,  dress, and pageantry as a tactic to memorialize them. It is a way to say: I am here, and you cannot deny  me." Entrancing and colorful, Patterson's works command the viewer to look beyond their rich formal  characteristics and to acknowledge the realities of social injustice. Using the paradoxical to convey  important messages, she draws on far reaching vernaculars of art history, religious imagery and popular  culture. Patterson explains that she uses beauty to trap the viewer 'physically, psychologically, and  emotionally' in intricate and seducing compositions. Shrouding figures almost completely, the artist  creates a presence of bodies no longer there, which raises pertinent questions about those who are not  visible. 

Since 2013, the idea of the garden, both real and imagined, has formed an essential arc of Patterson's  practice. Framing the garden as an active site of power, Patterson explores it as a metaphor for  "postcolonial" space and an extension of the body. "I am interested in how gardens - natural but  cultivated settings - operate with social demarcations. I investigate their relationship to beauty, dress,  class, race, the body, land and death." (Patterson, 2018). In new works, Patterson continues to deftly  combine splendor with danger. Juxtaposing visibility and invisibility; death and survival, Patterson's works  remain filled with an overwhelming sense of hope. People become memorialized in Patterson's gardens - each piece is a marker for bodies overlooked. Life fervently continues, and those who live in the garden  persist in finding ways to survive.

Artist Website | Monique Meloche website