Ebony G. Patterson: Dead Treez

Exhibition Website

Feb 9 2017 - May 13 2017

At the 808 Gallery,  808 Commonwealth Avenue

Dead Treez showcases the artist’s mixed-media installations and jacquard-woven photo tapestries that explore class, gender, and race through the lens of popular culture, social media, dress, and personal adornment. Patterson’s highly embellished, illuminated imagery is intended to captivate the viewer in order to look beyond her mesmerizing surfaces for deeper meanings.

Influenced by Jamaica’s dancehall culture, Jamaican-born Patterson explores the paradoxical relationship between traditional gender codes and the bombastic aesthetics of dancehall pageantry, presenting a complex vision of masculinity. Dead Treez is an immersive meditation on dancehall fashion and culture, regarded as a celebration of the disenfranchised in postcolonial Jamaica.

Ebony G. Patterson: Dead Treez was organized by The John Michael Kohler Arts Center and gratitude is extended BMO Harris Bank, Herzfeld Foundation, and Sargento Food, Inc., for major support of this exhibition and to the Wisconsin Arts Board, with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts. Funding was also provided by the Friends of Fiber Art International and the members of the Exhibitions & Collections Giving Circle. Arts Center programs are also made possible by the generous support of its members.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website




  • Mixed-media
  • International
  • Contemporary
  • Ethnic / Gender
  • Ebony G. Patterson

Exhibition Venues & Dates