The resplendent assemblages of Ebony G. Patterson comprise a rich inventory of beguiling decorative elements that come together in arrays of overwhelming density, as if to match the tropical forest, full of camouflaged presences. But the materials that Patterson conjugates are also the detritus of everyday consumerism and of the manufacturing excess that is offloaded and circulates in economies of the Global South. Patterson’s installations …fester… (2023) and when the land is in plumage… (2020) gather such elements as Jacquard tapestry, lace, tassels, beads, glass plants, conch shells, gold leaf, glitter and more. The compositions extend to wallpaper the artist designs.
Running across Patterson’s practice (which extends to painting, photography, video and performance) are dialectics of intimacy and ceremony, mourning and renewal. The motif of the garden operates as abstraction and allegory, in which the briar patch of folklore and mythologies mingles with contemporary political and social conditions. Patterson’s art speaks for a Caribbean generation left to find and forge meaning amid not only the debris of the colony but also the disappointments of the postcolonial nation-state. The artist – like most of us, from places like this – is left to refashion a world from bits and pieces: What is required of us after the plunder?
—Christopher Cozier
