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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| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
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| Autor Principal: | |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Angles
2025
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| Acceso en liña: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | 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. |
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