Ebony G. Patterson's expansive practice addresses visibility and invisibility, through explorations of class, race, gender, youth culture, pageantry and acts of violence in the context of "postcolonial" spaces. With the strong sensibility of a painter, Patterson works across multiple media - including tapestry, photography, video, sculpture, drawing and installation - united by her consistent visual language and intention. Since 2013, the idea of the garden, both real and imagined, has formed an essential arc of Patterson's practice. Framing the garden as an active site of power, Patterson explores it as a metaphor for "postcolonial" space and an extension of the body. "I am interested in how gardens - natural but cultivated settings - operate with social demarcations. I investigate their relationship to beauty, dress, class, race, the body, land and death."

Patterson states: "I aim to elevate those who have been deemed invisible/un-visible as a result of inherited colonial social structures, by incorporating their words, thoughts, dress, and pageantry as a tactic to memorialize them. It is a way to say: I am here, and you cannot deny me." The claiming and reclaiming of space and visibility, the demanding and gesture of actively taking agency, not waiting for others to witness or for others to co-create meaning, recurs throughout Patterson’s practice. Through her work, she bestows honor and dignity and beauty upon the bodies, whether appearing in her tapestries, video installations or drawings. The bodies are adorned and celebrated. Reminiscent of adornments in Jamaican dancehall, Trinidadian carnival or Bajan crop over celebrations, Patterson’s embellishments layer Caribbean culture, African heritage and contemporary Black culture onto a foundational global discourse on race.

In this early work, Entourage, the garden is evident only subtly via the use of floral designs as a decorative component and the idea of the garden as an ecosystem that can metaphorically explore family and society. “I was interested in the idea of the family portrait and what constitutes a family portrait. Who gets to sit in the center?” Patterson says. “I was also interested in other kinds of structures that relate to family, especially in working-class spaces and the role of gangs as a communal or familial structure. There seems to be a leader in the middle. As each person comes in, we can figure out who that person is and who are the other figures that may relate to him. Each of them are tipping their head. I always would reference the mug shot as a way of referencing stereotypes of the Black male body. There is something that happens with the tipping of one’s head. It is not just about cool. It is definitely not just about bravado. There is dignity. If you even think of historical images that are painted of kings and queens, there is an uprightness that happens from the center. And there is a confrontation that happens in the gaze. The idea that one also tips ones’ head, there is a claiming. This is an interesting way of asserting power. Thinking contextually also about the spaces that those people come from, they are spaces that are not allowed to have that kind of power.”