Join us for a lecture by artist Ebony G. Patterson, whose multi-media installation, Brella Krew (from the Fambily Series) is featured in 21c’s exhibition, Dis-semblance: Projecting and Perceiving Identity. Born and raised in Jamaica, Patterson studied at the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, and earned an M.F.A. from Washington University in Saint Louis. An Associate Professor in Painting and Mixed Media at the University of Kentucky, Ebony Patterson currently lives and works in Lexington, KY and Kingston, Jamaica.

My ongoing body of work explores constructions of the masculine within popular culture – while using Jamaican dancehall culture as platform for this discourse. My works seeks to measure the masculine by looking at how popular culture as contributed to these transformations. The early work looked at the fashionable practice of skin bleaching, followed by investigations of so-called ‘ bling culture’ and its relationship to the masculine within an urban context. While still making references to dancehall culture, my work raises larger questions about beauty, gender ideals and constructs of masculinity within so called ‘popular black’ culture. It examines the similarities and differences between ‘camp aesthetics’ – the use of feminine gendered adornment – in the construct of the urban masculine within popular culture. This body of work raises questions about body politics, performance of gender, gender and beauty, beauty and stereotyping, race and beauty, and body and ritual. 

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