Ebony G. Patterson, Brella Krew from the Fambily series (detail), 2013, Triptych, mixed media, hand embellished photo tapestries, 78 x 285", Collection Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum, Louisville, KY. Image via gardneredge.com.
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dy/nas/ty
March 7 – June 15, 2014
Johnson
County Community College
12345
College Boulevard
Overland
Park, KS
Jamaican-born artist's first US institution solo show!
Press Release by Bruce Hartmann, executive
director, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art:
Ebony G. Patterson’s previous
monumental mug-shot portraits have evolved into complex groupings of figures as
she furthers her exploration of the appropriation and interpretation of
feminine archetypes by young men of the African diaspora. Aspects of the
feminine, fashion, pattern, decoration and pastiche proliferate in her
large-scale, mixed media works and elaborate installations. Her Nerman Museum
show – an encompassing installation – will be her first one-person exhibition
at an American museum.
Patterson
states, “The work explores ideas about masculinity and how the masculine is
constructed, particularly in popular culture, using the dancehall space,
Jamaican popular culture, as the platform for the conversation. Dancehall space
has always been an incredibly macho space … to see the feminine superimposed on
the masculine canvas, or the masculine slate, begins to change these
understandings. It raises questions about what is now understood as masculine.”
Her
monumental tapestries – encrusted with glitter, rhinestones, fabric silk
flowers, jewelry, sunglasses, etc. – are both vibrant and inescapable – and
grounded in the subcultures of Kingston, Jamaica’s dancehall happenings.
Flamboyant and visually assertive, her works investigate shifting and
contradictory roles in Jamaican dancehall culture. She explores contemporary
notions of fashion and masculine beauty, considering practices like skin
bleaching, meticulous grooming and riotously patterned attire – all common
within dancehall culture.
Patterson’s Fambily series
explores the gang as a way to re-envision family and to examine the complicated
relations between men in the gang. “The Fambily series, in
particular, also explores the gang structure and looks at gang hierarchy. Gang
space is also another kind of space where men learn to assert themselves in the
macho and is also a space where they want you to understand a certain kind of
masculinity,” explains Patterson.
Patterson
did her undergraduate work at the Edna Manley College for the Visual and
Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, and earned her master's of fine arts in
2006 from the Sam Fox College of Design and Visual Arts at Washington
University, St. Louis. Her works have been featured in numerous exhibitions
including Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, Perez Art Museum,
Miami, El Museo De Barrio, Queens Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in
Harlem, NY; eMERGING: Visual Art and Music in a Post-Hip-Hop era,
The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Brooklyn, NY; and Monique
Meloche Gallery, Chicago and will be included in the upcoming 2015 Havana
Biennale, Havana, Cuba. Patterson is an assistant professor in the painting
department at the University of Kentucky, Lexington.
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