Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaican-born mixed media artist who employs elements of sculpture, painting, and installation to examine themes of identity, beauty, and visibility in post-colonial spaces. Since 2013, Patterson has used the idea of the garden as a central theme in her work, creating lush pieces that mimic the layers of both nature and society. “I am interested in how gardens–natural but cultivated settings–operate with social demarcations,” she said. “I investigate their relationship to beauty, dress, class, race, the body, land and death.” In …BENT… AND RIPPLED IN THE SWALLOW….SUBMITTING TO ….AN ENDING, 2023, Patterson crafts a complex and immersive visual experience featuring butterflies, flies, roaches, and flowers–a striking metaphor for the ways in which marginalized bodies move and grow in sometimes harsh environments, addressing themes of beauty, death, growth, and survival.

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