Ebony G. Patterson: Beauty, Grief, and the Power of Visibility
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By Divya Gangwani
Ebony G. Patterson: Beauty, Grief, and the Power of Visibility Highlighting Ebony G. Patterson's “She is the Mourning”
Ebony G. Patterson’s work glimmers with color, texture, and ornamentation, and beneath its dazzling surface lies a meditation on loss, care, and remembrance.
Through unique hand-embellishments, Patterson reimagines mourning as an act of beauty and resistance. Her practice honors the unseen labor of Black women and working-class communities, drawing attention to what is often overlooked.
Explore Patterson’s work below and discover how her art transforms grief into something luminous and unforgettable.
Take a closer look at “She is the Mourning”
“She is the Mourning” is derived from a public art project that the artist unveiled in 2021, comprising four large-scale works that adorned the facades and walls of buildings throughout Philadelphia’s Village of Arts and Humanity. The series shines a light on the under-acknowledged labor of Black women in working-class communities, especially in acts of care, protest, and mourning.
Each of the scenes includes headless, monumental figures embedded in dreamlike and embellished gardens, punctuated with a poetic phrase. For this limited edition, Patterson transforms the prints by puncturing and attaching beautiful added elements to the paper’s surface.
EBONY G PATTERSON She is the Mourning 36 x 33.75 x 5.5 inches framed Hand-embellished archival pigment print in white wood shadowbox frame
Limited edition of 20 with 6AP + 1PP Hand-embellished, signed, and numbered by the artist SHOP NOW
We Belong Here: The Gutierrez Collection
We are honored that Ebony G. Patterson’s She Is the Mourning—originally acquired from ART FOR CHANGE by Onay Gutierrez —was featured in the exhibition We Belong Here: The Gutierrez Collection at The Cameron Art Museum.
The exhibition featured over 130 works created in the twenty-first century by some of the biggest names in contemporary art today. The international contemporary artists featured work in a broad range of media, engaged with current social, political, cultural, and personal issues. “The Gutierrez Collection aims to create a space where art becomes a platform for dialogue and understanding across a broad spectrum of identities and perspectives.” - Gutierrez and Jeff Childers.
ABOUT EBONY G PATTERSON
Ebony G. Patterson's multilayered practice– in painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and video– uses beauty as a tool to address global social and political injustices. Her immersive gardens grow out of a complex entanglement of race, gender, class, and violence. Patterson seduces the viewer into acknowledging a darker truth lurking ominously beneath the surface. Upon closer inspection, the figures in these embellished paper works are disembodied, un- whole. While the bright, effusive visual cues on the surface of her work suggest vivifying celebration, these signifiers point to the opposite. Their ghostly forms hover amidst a tangle of flora and fauna, plants which themselves might harbor a secret poison. Patterson’s gardens are never far from notions of violence, of memorial, of blood and tears.
