Deeply Rooted
From colonial past to future possibilities
Corinne Basabe
Balance: what if … ?
Ebony Patterson thinks metaphorically about nature and now some of the metaphors are materializing at the Bronx New York Botanical Garden. (Photo: Frank Ishman; courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago)
Contemplating the relationship of organisms and their physical surroundings, I left Ebony Patterson’s major sculptural and horticultural installation wondering about the far-reaching implications of ecological balance for society. Her site-specific exhibition, ...things come to thrive...in the shedding...in the molting…, was on view at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), May 27 through October 22, 2023, in the Bronx.
Patterson placed vultures among the botanicals to symbolize the birds’ vital function in the regeneration of life via their consumption of carrion. (NYBG Photo)
The exhibition illuminates phenomena of shedding and rejuvenation in the natural world. Birds shed their feathers, snakes their skins, and plants their leaves. What is discarded nourishes the soil, which nourishes plants and trees that provide food and shelter for insects and animals.
Patterson also challenges us to look at the beauty of the New York Botanical Garden’s 250-acre landscape as well as the invisible historic context: a bold concept because the land was taken from the Lenape people four centuries ago. The Garden respectfully acknowledges this history for the public.
Aerial view of … things come to thrive...in the shedding...in the molting... on the Conservatory lawn (NYBG Photo)
Its impeccably landscaped lawns and gardens drown out the sounds of police car sirens and honking horns of angry drivers in nearby neighborhoods. The vibrant beauty of the flowers, shrubs and trees make it difficult to think about the ongoing issues that the city is facing.
My professional concerns begin to fade: thoughts about undocumented residents who struggle with housing and getting work, and middle aged patients struggling with anxiety and depression due to the hardships of New York city life. The NYBG is a respite. I discarded my frame of mind as a community health worker supervisor in a major hospital and gave in to the Indian philosopher Jiddu Kristnamurti’s idea of not only being the observer of nature, but more profoundly seeing oneself as also being observed by nature. Patterson’s exhibit brilliantly illustrated the vital processes in nature that are omnipresent despite the mindset of the viewer.
The … fester … installation transformed a rotunda space in the LuEster T. Mertz Library (NYBG Photo)
In an interview at the NYBG with Thelma Golden, director of The Studio Museum in Harlem, Patterson states that a garden can be seen as an embellishment of a city. The embellishment that is above ground conceals another garden that is underneath. This is the underlying theme of her installation, Fester.
According to Patterson, Fester is a wall that is a meditation on the word “fester.” It imagines the wall as an abandoned structure has decayed. It supposes that nature is reclaiming it and bringing with it certain truths. I see it as a call to action, a reckoning, an opportunity to recognize that we are not masters over nature. The reverse may be true in the may it archives our past and has dominion over our present and future. It reclaims our failed attempts of civilization and dares us to try again.
Backbone and scull remain after the festering ferment. (Detail of … fester … in the LuEster T. Mertz Library (NYBG Photo)
The installation on display in the Mertz Library Building Rotunda was deeply moving from my personal Caribbean perspective. Its dominant repetition of the colors red, green and gold could represent liberation in the pan-African and the Rastafarian movements in Jamaica. Ebony Patterson is from Kingston, Jamaica. Seeing those colors with golden metallic human vertebrae was quite striking; the skeletal forms refer to the grounds’ hidden past.
The multitude of vertical pleats, folds and hanging fabrics of levels are also reminiscent of the Egungun costumes of the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria. The masquerade is a visible manifestation of the spirits of departed ancestors who return for remembrance, celebration and blessings.
In viewing this installation I also recalled the Egungun costumes the award-winning, ritual costume designer Dana Kawano. Her costumes are worn by professional dancers allowing the audience to experience the awe inspiring movement of the layers of fabrics.
One of Dana Kawano's Egungun costumes. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
In Jamaica “Egungun” would be called duppies, and on St. John/St.Thomas, US. Virgin Islands where I spent most of my childhood, they would be called “jumbees.” During carnival celebrations we include moko jumbees as part of our masquerade. The word “moko” means healer in Central Africa and jumbee is derived from the word “zumbi” in the Kongo language. Our jumbee masqueraders don elaborate costumes and prance and dance on stilts to calypso music.
Like our ancestors, we shed, molt, our identities and assume an alternate one that is joyous, powerful and free during carnival. Molting was liberation for enslaved Africans in the diaspora. Their various festivals — carnival, Mardi Gras and Pinkster — are about shedding.
The folds of fabrics with skulls has a reverse side of gloves from which birds of paradise sprout. Installation view of … fester… in the LuEster T. Mertz Library (NYBG photo)
Bird of paradise detail.
On the reverse side of the … fester … tapestry, black birds of paradise flowers protruded from 1000 red laced gloves. The flamboyant colors of the birds of paradise are the pride of the tropics. They are not native to New York, nor are they usually depicted as charcoal black. The red laced gloved hands illuminate the flip side of the lush rendering of the reverse side of the tapestry. It speaks to me of loss, a reckoning by ancestors from the past, a wound that has been allowed to fester, and dreams deferred, that can only be seen if one takes the time to look at history from all angles.
Actual bird of paradise flower. Scott Bauer, USDA - This image was released by the Agricultural Research Service, the research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, with the ID K9054-1.
I dwelled on the fester concept as a Virgin Islander living in New York City. The US Virgin Islands is not thriving in the shedding and the molting of our natural resources and vestiges of our native culture. Patterson's concept of rejuvenation is not applicable to our local history and present condition. Unlike the discarded skin of a snake, abandoned windmills, old forts and colonial buildings still stand; they don’t break down or nourish the land. However, the bodies of the enslaved who built those structures did.
Enrique “Rico” Corneiro, a Virgin Island author, historian and publisher, told me there were areas designated for slave burials, but with no headstones. And, because the enslaved were generally buried without coffins, their bodies and clothing simply degraded. There also are areas on plantations where human remains of unknown racial identity were uncovered. During pandemics like cholera and yellow fever or hurricanes, undertakers and grave diggers had a hard time keeping up with the corpses and mass graves were used for both free and unfree people as well as for black and white people. Nature’s leveling processes ensured that those who did not embrace human equality in life would experience it in death.
Patterson envisions the red-laced gloved hands as a landscape drenched with an infinite number of bodies. Underneath the marketing of a tropical paradise, with white sandy beaches, luxury hotels, exotic mixed drinks and scenic views are the same landscape of ominous gloved hands invisible to the naked eye.
Decomposition of human bodies along with their histories is a strong theme in the exhibit. Black shadowy hands can be seen in the shadow boxes in the series studies for a vocabulary of loss, along with flowers, insects, butterflies and snakes.
Works from the mixed-media paper collage series studies for a vocabulary of loss (2022) on display in the Ronda and LoFaro Art Gallery in the LuEster T. Mertz Library Building (NYBG Photo)
Patterson’s contemplation of the underbelly of gardens and the natural world is to reckon with the hidden legacy of people that once lived in the Bronx, and in many beautiful places. At Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park (formerly Van Cortlandt Plantation), a burial ground for enslaved Africans has been found beneath the lush ground cover of one of the park’s trails. The luxuriant grounds also conceal the devastation of the indigenous people who called the place home before the wealthy Dutch Van Cortlandt family’s occupation and when some indigenous people were enslaved there.
The balance of thriving, shedding and molting is particularly evident in the living installations in the Haupt Conservatory. Among the luscious landscaping are life-sized realistic black sculptures of vultures that remind the viewer of the life cycle. Huddled in various locations inside and outside of the conservatory, the vultures are symbolic stewards of the cycle of life.
In the Conservatory’s Palms of the World Gallery portion of the exhibit, I walked along a red-painted path and heard the sounds of vultures posed naturally among the vegetation. The path leads to a pool with flowing water that has a tall, plant-filled wall at its center and the entire area is populated with flourishing botanical life and vultures.
Detail of … things come to thrive...in the shedding...in the molting... . in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
(NYBG photo)
I sat at the edge of the pool and saw the vultures as beautiful and honorable. In consuming carrion they are nourished and in turn enrich the land with broken down nutrients that sustain life and enable humans to survive. Like the pollinators, these birds play an important role in the ongoing regeneration of all life.
destruction … re-creation
It was serene. I looked at the water, the wall of plants, and noticed a pair of life-sized ghostly human legs poking out from beneath the wall, and there it was: the underbelly. In many of the installations ghostly frosted sculptures of extinct plants can be seen among the flora as well. Patterson asks us not only to ponder the hidden history of people, but that of plant species that have been lost.
Detail of … things come to thrive...in the shedding...in the molting... . in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
(NYBG photo)
hese sculptures remind me of all the plants I heard about from my mother but have never seen. When she was not working as an executive director of the Legislature on St Thomas, Virgin Islands, she was gardening on the side of our home. It was not only for relaxation; it was an essential part of a culture that was passed down to her from her ancestors from Tortola, British Virgin Islands. She planted and grafted mangoes, grew papayas, thyme and hot peppers, sweet basil, lemon grass and callaloo. Early in her career, when she lived on St John and worked as a secretary, she had cinnamon, coconut, sugar apple, tamarind, and gooseberry trees and tended okra and pigeon peas plants. There were fruit trees that she mentioned as if they are species of a time gone by. They were not extinct, just very difficult to find in the Virgin Islands.
They are ghostly in my imagination, like the frosted ghostly sculptures in Patterson’s work. The cultural traditions associated with those species also risk disappearing. To make our traditional guavaberry (myrciaria floribunda) wine for Christmas or guava berry tarts, many are willing to pay exorbitant prices for berries imported from other islands in order to maintain our cultural cuisine.
They are ghostly in my imagination, like the frosted ghostly sculptures in Patterson’s work. The cultural traditions associated with those species also risk disappearing. To make our traditional guavaberry (myrciaria floribunda) wine for Christmas or guava berry tarts, many are willing to pay exorbitant prices for berries imported from other islands in order to maintain our cultural cuisine.
To center myself before going to work, I make quick doodles with themes from my upbringing and was delighted to see the themes reflected in Patterson’s show. In one such drawing, Jumbie Garden, the jumbie is the nurturer of native plants that are essential to making traditional recipes. He is tending to the okra, callaloo, and scotch bonnet peppers in my mother’s garden.
Corinne Basabe, Jumbie Garden drawing
In the interview with Thelma Golden, Patterson reminds us that many plants in Caribbean gardens were transported on the ships carrying enslaved Africans as cargo. In my drawing, the plants allow the jumbee to be connected with its descendants.
Patterson’s work is uplifting. It not only challenges viewers to look at underbellies but also at the concept of rejuvenation and eco-systems from all angles, including human ecologies. While she believes that it is important to experience beauty and pleasure, it's equally important to reflect on trauma and how it relates to larger social issues that many find discomforting.
I believe that this balance will help us make conscientious decisions. Shedding and molting is a useful concept to apply to urban plight and social decay. We know what it looks like when plants and animals thrive. The ambitions bestowed on protecting the natural world can be extended to low-income communities. We are capable of imagining cities where all humans can thrive and also ways to decentralize areas of low income, high population density by developing work opportunities and affordable housing in more spacious locales.
Ebony Patterson’s installation ...things come to thrive...in the shedding...in the molting... provides an astounding challenge to look deeply at the lessons of the past and present, vis-a-vis processes in the natural world, in designing a sustainable human future.
Ebony Patterson’s installation ...things come to thrive...in the shedding...in the molting... provides an astounding Ebony Patterson’s NYBG installation provides an astounding challenge to look deeply at the lessons of the past and present, vis-a-vis processes in the natural world, in designing a more viable human future.
Corinne Basabe is a community health worker supervisor, an artist, and talk show producer and host, who maintains an interest in anthropology, her major area of study in college.
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