Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaican-born, Chicago-based 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.”

Patterson was awarded the MacArthur Foundation's Genius Grant in 2024, and fellowships including the David C. Driskell Prize (2023); Tiffany Foundation Grant (2017), the United States Artist Award, Painter and Mixed Media Artist (2018) and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Art Grant (2015). Her work is in the public collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the High Museum, Atlanta, GA; and Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY, among others. Recent exhibitions include Art Basel Miami Beach (2024), EXPO Chicago (2024), and her major solo show at the New York Botanical Garden (2023). In 2025, the Speed Art Museum will present her first career retrospective.

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