Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

n artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 born in Kingston, Jamaica

Kingston, Jamaica

Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects the town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport to the rest of the island...

 in 1981. She has taught in the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts

Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts

The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts operates from a single campus, located in Kingston, Jamaica. This Government of Jamaica institution, formally known as the Cultural Training Centre, was in 1995 reclassified as a tertiary institution and renamed to its current name.The...

, the Sam Fox College of Design & Visual at Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...

. She has taught at the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

 and is currently an Assistant Professor in Painting at the University of Kentucky

University of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...

 She has shown her artwork in numerous solo and private exhibitions, such as Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art, Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....

, (2007). National Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica

National Gallery of Jamaica

The National Gallery of Jamaica, in Kingston, Jamaica, is Jamaica's premier art collection. It is located in the Kingston Mall, a commercial and cultural center on Kingston harbour....

,(2006,2008,2010),Ghetto Biennale , Port-au-Prince, Haiti,Rockstone and Bootheel, Real Artways, (2010) Wrestling With the Image, Museum of the Americas

Museum of the Americas

Museum of the Americas may refer to:* Museum of the Americas , a pre-Columbian art history museum in Madrid, Spain* Museum of the Americas , an art museum in Doral, Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA...

,(2011)

Work

Patterson’s work revolves around questions of identity and the body, and takes the form of mixed media paintings, drawings and collages, most of them on paper. Photography, found objects, installation and performance have recently become increasingly important in her practice. Early work was primarily concerned with the female body as object. Her Venus Investigations objectified the female torso, headless and anonymous, and explored the relationship between the ample-bodied “Venus” or female goddess images of prehistoric times and contemporary female self-images and beauty ideals. Subsequent works more provocatively focused on the vagina as an object and, by implication, examined the taboos that surround this body part and its functions within Jamaican culture. This also led to 3-dimensional constructions made from intimate female articles such as sanitary napkins and tampons and more abstracted and surreal hybrid organic forms that appeared in her large paper collages of 2007. This early body of work has a sober and at times even majestic visual beauty which as she puts it, reference “beauty through the use of the grotesque but visceral, confrontational and deconstructed.”

Gangstas for Life

One of Patterson's most recognized body of work, is a series entitled "Gangstas for Life," which explores conceptions of masculinity within Dancehall culture. In this series, the artist specifically explores skin bleaching as a means of marking and transformation, not as an act of racial self-loathing. Additionally the series "seeks to examine the dichotomy between Jamaican stereotypical ideologies of homosexual practices and its parallels within dancehall culture." Red floral and fish motifs throughout the series serve to represent homosexuality within a predominantly homophobic culture. Pattersons images imaginatively recreate portraits of young black males who bleach their skin, pluck their eyebrows and wear 'bling' jewellery to enhance their gangsta status. Patterson finds beauty in their psychic violence glamorizing them with glittered halos and luscious lipstick. The artist explores perceptions of beauty as grotesque within the series, and her portrayal of the subjects' cracked, bleeding and oozing skins.

Awards and Scholarships

2011
Rex Nettleford Fellowship in Cultural Studies, Awarded by The Rhodes Trust

Young Alumni award of Distinction, Washington University in St. Louis,MO

2008
Vermont Studio Center Artist Fellowship

2006
Prime Minister’s Youth Awards for Excellence, in Art and Culture (Jamaica)
-the highest award a young person can receive in Arts and Culture in Jamaica
Peter Marcus Award for Printmaking (Washington University)
Nominated for the Joan Mitchell Fellowship for Painters,(Washington University)
Emerson Visiting Critics and Curators Series, Museum of Contemporary Art,
(St. Louis, MO) selected from a pool of over seventy artists to be visited by Curator Ingrid Schaffener

2005
Super Plus Under 40 Artist of the Year (Jamaica)
Vicky Award Washington University, Printmaking Department

2004
William Danforth Fellowship (Washington University)
Nancy Glanstien Scholarship for Graduate Students (Washington University)
Diploma (4 years) First Class Honors (lower), Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts
Albert Huie Award for Outstanding Student in Painting (Edna Manley College)

2003
Order of French Merit Scholarship to the Pont -Aven School of Contemporary Enid Driscoll Spalleti Memorial Award (ROSL)

2002
Recipient of Two Bronze Medals from the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission Fine Arts Competition
Recipient of the Royal Over-Seas League Travel Scholarship (only recipient from the Caribbean)
Brian Morgan Scholarship (Edna Manley College)

2001
Coca –Cola Jamaica Bursary
Merit Award from the Jamaica Cultural Development Fine Arts Competition

External links

• Seeline Gallery