The first thing you want to do when standing in front of one of the jacquard photo tapestries by mixed media artist Ebony G. Patterson is reaching out and touching it. There's some glitter shining here, an embroidered pattern there and then there are dense crocheted flowers, fringes of glass beads and plastic pearls erupting from the tapestry like fresh cascades of water, that tempt you. If you've resisted the urge to touch the piece, the second impulse is to imagine yourself inside the tapestry, embraced by the lush greenery and the colourful flowers forming it.
Yet, right when you start thinking about stepping into this colourful and magical world, you realise that not everything is as perfect as it seems: quite often the vegetation is indeed employed as a sort of malevolent mantle that partially covers discarded clothes and other unsettling elements; behind a bush there is what may or may not be a headless body, not to mention the hands and feet also protruding from the foliage.
By the time you realise that not everything is as gloriously peaceful as it seemed, Patterson has already drawn you into her worlds and into her gardens, where she asks you to ponder about issues going from racial segregation and identity to inequality, social injustice and invisibility, post-colonial experiences, violence, masculinity and gender norms.
Born in 1981 in Kingston, Jamaica, and dividing her time between her hometown and Lexington, Kentucky, the artist has currently got a show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM; until 5th May 2019). Its title "…while the dew is still on the roses…" is borrowed from "In the Garden", a 1912 gospel hymn about an encounter with God in a garden.
The exhibition, organised by PAMM's chief curator Tobias Ostrander, develops as a large night garden, and features drawings, tapestries, videos and new installations. As a whole there are six large-scale new commissions and seven other works from the past five years in this neo-Baroque immersive experience that literally traps the visitors' senses on a physical, psychological and emotional level.
Flora grows from the walls, but also decorates paintings and pours from the ceiling, where a new site specific work also hangs - it is a cloud made with hundreds of pairs of women's shoes covered in black paint.
The event opens with Patterson's video "The Observation" (2012) showing two gender-ambiguous figures wearing a black and a white attire and being surrounded by the wilderness. Visitors are free to interepret and guess who or what they stand for and the piece goes well with the surrounding tapestries and drawings on display.
Patterson considers herself as a painter, but mainly works using a variety of materials and her tapestries - which are definitely the best works on display here - could be considered as paintings made with fabrics, tassels, sequins, beads, pearls or costume jewellery rather than with mere colours.
The artist mainly works with different fabrics and designs also the attires donned by her characters (it was her mother who introduced her to the power of dress). Her garden tapestries are places of joys and happiness, but also of sorrow and pain: the dew of the title refers indeed to the power of regeneration and rebirth, but to tears as well as the gardens hint at relaxing and maybe sleeping among flowers, but also conjure up in the mind burial places.
There is therefore a dichotomy between beauty and death behind pieces such as the "Dead Treez" series, that is actually inspired by crime scene photographs. The artist collected newspaper clippings and then reworked them, hiding bodies and corpses among flowers as an act of protest and outrage, but also as a way to destabilise the viewer who sees at first only what looks like a splendidly serene scene.
As Patterson states in a press release, "For almost five years, I have been exploring the idea of gardens, both real and imagined, and their relationship to post-colonial spaces. I am interested in how gardens - natural but cultivated settings - operate as sites of social demarcation. I investigate their relationship to beauty, dress, class, race, the body, land and death."
The event closes in a symmetrical way with another video projection, entitled "Three Kings Weep", showing three young men stripped to the waist and crying, standing in front of an intricate floral wallpaper. The voice of a child can be heard reading Claude McKay's 1913 poem "If We Must Die", that draws parellelisms between racial violence in Chicago in the early 1900s and racial violence now.
If you're wondering if Patterson's ingenious use of fabrics, embellishments and vividly bright colours will help her getting some collaborations with a fashion designer or brand, well, in a way that has already happened.
The exhibition at PAMM is presented by Christian Louboutin with support from the International Women's Forum, and the artist has also created a piece for the Christian Louboutin Design District boutique in Miami Beach (the display coincided with Art Basel Miami and can be viewed in the window shop until today), a new version of her "...bearing witness..." tapestry from 2017.
The piece, covered in exotic flowers, is emblazoned with the words "See Me", camouflaged among the vegetation, but distinctly visible as the threads forming them are left hanging and sprout from the tapestry. While being a hint at Patterson's pieces in which human figures are often hidden beyond the vegetation, the slogan could be conceived as an invitation to viewers to "see" and therefore acknowledge their fellow human beings and not just stop at the mere surface of things.
Image credits for this post
1. Ebony G. Patterson. . . . they stood in a time of unknowing . . . for those who bear/bare witness, 2018. Hand cut jacquard photo tapestry with glitter, appliques, pins, embellishments, fabric, tassels, brooches, acrylic, glass, pearls, beads, hand cast heliconias, and artist-designed fabric wallpaper (not pictured). Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
2. Ebony G. Patterson. . . . found among the reeds-Dead Treez . . . , 2015 (detail). Jacquard weave tapestry with handmade shoes, knitted leaves, and costume jewelry, 8 1/2 x 12 x 1 1/2 feet. Collection of Laura Less Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum Hotel. Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
3. Ebony G. Patterson. . . . wata marassa-beyond the bladez . . . , 2014. Mixed media on paper, 85 x 84 inches. Collection of Doreen Chambers and Philippe Monroguie, Brooklyn, NY. Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
4. Ebony G. Patterson. . . . they stood in a time of unknowing . . . for those who bear/bare witness, 2018 (detail). Hand cut jacquard photo tapestry with glitter, appliques, pins, embellishments, fabric, tassels, brooches, acrylic, glass, pearls, beads, hand cast heliconias, and artist-designed fabric wallpaper (not pictured). Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
5. Ebony G. Patterson. Untitled Species VIII (Ruff) . . . , 2012. Mixed media on paper, 65 3/4 x 50 inches. Collection of Marti and Tony Oppenheimer, Beverly Hills, California. Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
6. Ebony G. Patterson. . . . a wailing black horse . . . for those who bear/bare witness, 2018 (detail). Hand cut jacquard photo tapestry with glitter, appliques, pins, embellishments, fabric, tassels, brooches, acrylic, glass pearls, beads, hand cast embellished heliconias, shelf, embellished resin owl, and artist-designed fabric wallpaper (not pictured). Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
7. Ebony G. Patterson. Dead Tree in a Forest . . . , 2013. Mixed media on paper. 87 x 83 inches. Collection of Monique Meloche and Evan Boris, Chicago. Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
8. Ebony G. Patterson, Installation for the Christian Louboutin Design District boutique in Miami Beach.
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