Fabric/ating communities in the work of Ebony Patterson and Nyugen Smith: distortions and re-directions of scales, places and gazes

This article links the works of two Caribbean American visual artists, Ebony Patterson and Nyugen Smith, who include in their equally large installations practices of sewing, stitching, quilting, combining and assembling fabric and thread. In the context of Black Atlantic deportations, these practic...

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Bibliografske podrobnosti
izdano v:URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles,
Glavni avtor: Wallart, Kerry-Jane
Format: Article ou chapitre numérique
Jezik:Anglais
Izdano: Angles 2025
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Online dostop:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Opis
Izvleček:This article links the works of two Caribbean American visual artists, Ebony Patterson and Nyugen Smith, who include in their equally large installations practices of sewing, stitching, quilting, combining and assembling fabric and thread. In the context of Black Atlantic deportations, these practices function as rites of togetherness within a haunted space of forced mobility and uprootedness, as well as of reconstitution of isolated and frail traces. I contend that both visual artists open up a space of fabric/ation where experiences of Black diasporic existence can be gathered and shared, thus making for a common and communal reception of aesthetic sensibility. This is operated through work on scale, which is both monumental and minute; and on the de-centered spatiality implemented by works which are both immediately striking, and long to circulate through and around in their entirety. Ultimately, Patterson’s and Smith’s works interrogate the direction of White gazes on the Black body.