Ebony G. Patterson ...when the cuts erupt...the garden rings...and the warning is a wailing...

The new works represent Patterson’s expansion into a new phase of her practice, emerging from the foundation of her previous garden-themed constructions. The garden serves as a “postcolonial” symbol of a past that is never fully buried and barely visible. Her immersive gardens grow out of a complex entanglement of race, gender, class, and violence. “Beauty, for me, is a tool of seduction,” the artist has said, “a trap.” The coexistence of beauty and horror in Patterson’s environments parallel the abundant plant-life she conjures through an excess of embellished materials. The artist titles her Project Wall piece, …and the dew cracks the earth, in five acts of lamentation…between the cuts…beneath the leaves…below the soil…. To construct the work, Patterson shreds and tears paper by hand, damaging the material in the process of making new forms, parallel to the act of gardening when living things are shred, torn, and cut. Her gardens are never far from notions of violence, of memorial, of blood and tears.

Curation: Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator

Thursday, Saturday & Sunday: 10:00 am–5:00 pm

Friday: 10:00 am–8:00 pm

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

3750 Washington Boulevard

St. Louis, MO 63108

https://camstl.org/exhibitions/ebony-g-patterson/