“I am very interested in how regular people claim space and that’s what street side memorials do. So, when a tragedy happens, they mark the space by adding things that we would associate with a memorial in the same way . . . so there are flowers, there are toys, there are candles.” — Ebony Patterson This also led to 3-dimensional constructions made from intimate female articles such as sanitary napkins and tampons and more abstracted and surreal hybrid organic forms that appeared in her large paper collages of 2007. This early body of work has a sober and at times even majestic visual beauty which as she puts it, references “beauty through the use of the grotesque but visceral, confrontational and deconstructed.” Patterson’s 2016 solo show at the Museum of Arts and Design, Dead Treez, incorporated several appliquéd commercially-woven Jacquard weavings in which Patterson used restaged images of photographs that had been taken of murder victims in Jamaica and then circulated on social media. The exhibition also included a collection of mannequins in vibrant Jamaican dance hall wear (titled Swag Swag Krew), and a series of vitrines with artificial flora and jewelry belonging to the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design and in which patterned bodies reclined (titled ...buried again to carry on growing...), again referencing the victims of violent crime. In 2018, Patterson was invited to participate in the first edition of Open Spaces, a series of installations, performances, and talks in Kansas City, Missouri. Her installation ...called up focused on one of two public pools in Swope Park. I want to better honor this history by taking down the fence, cleaning the space, and creating a work here. I also want to ask what it means to memorialize not just a site that was already memorialized, but also to embellish a site that is already embellished. What does it mean to give presence and meaning to a space that has been essentially unheard of? How do we reclaim what is meant for the collective? These are questions I want to pose not only for the exhibition but also for the community who once used it and will now use it again and learn from what they have to say. Patterson further elaborated after the work was complete, noting, the work was received positively by those who frequently visit Swope Park. Gangstas for Life series (2008 – ongoing) One of Patterson’s most recognized body of work is a series entitled “Gangstas for Life,” which explores conceptions of masculinity within Dancehall culture. In this series, the artist specifically explores skin bleaching as a means of marking and transformation, not as an act of racial self-loathing. Additionally, the series “seeks to examine the dichotomy between Jamaican stereotypical ideologies of homosexual practices and its parallels within dancehall culture.” Red floral and fish motifs throughout the series serve to represent homosexuality within a predominantly homophobic culture. Patterson’s images imaginatively recreate portraits of young black males who bleach their skin, pluck their eyebrows and wear ‘bling’ jewelry to enhance their gangsta status. Patterson finds beauty in their psychic violence glamorizing them with glittered halos and luscious lipstick. Advertise with Urban Ask about our digital campaigns! The URBAN EXPERIENCE | 2020 11
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