Bisa Butler

Bisa Butler (born 1973) is an American fiber artist known for her vibrant, quilted portraits celebrating Black life--from everyday people to notable historical figures. Through her quilts, Butler aims to “tell stories that may have been forgotten over time.” She often uses kente cloth and African wax printed fabrics in her quilts, so her subjects are "adorned with and made up of the cloth of our ancestor." The artist has exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Epcot Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and other venues.
Life and career.
Bisa Butler was born in Orange, New Jersey, grew up in South Orange, and graduated from Columbia High School in 1991. Her mother is a French teacher from New Orleans and her father, a college president, was born in Ghana. Butler majored in fine art and graduated cum laude from Howard University, where she studied the work of Romare Bearden, attended lectures by prominent Black artists such as Lois Mailou Jones, and studied under lecturers such as Elizabeth Catlett, Jeff Donaldson, and Ernie Barnes. Her undergraduate degree was in painting, but she has stated that she never really connected with the medium. 
Butler went on to complete a master's degree in art education from Montclair State University in 2004. There, she took a Fiber Art class that inspired her choice of quilting as an artistic medium. She said in an interview, "As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been quilting ever since." 
Along with being a practicing artist, Butler taught art in the Newark Public Schools for over a decade. She now lives and works in Orange, New Jersey and is represented by the Claire Oliver Gallery in Harlem.
Artistry.
Butler's quilts both heavily incorporate African textiles as well as expand on a rich African American quilting tradition. She explains in her artist statement: "African Americans have been quilting since we were brought to this country and needed to keep warm. Enslaved people were not given large pieces of fabric and had to make do with the scraps of cloth that were left after clothing wore out. From these scraps the African American quilt aesthetic came into being...My own pieces are reminiscent of this tradition, but I use African fabrics from my father’s homeland of Ghana, batiks from Nigeria, and prints from South Africa." She has also been inspired by the figurative textile works of Faith Ringgold. 
Butler typically works in bright jewel tones rather than representational colors to depict skin tone. Color serves to convey the emotions of the individuals in her quilts rather than their actual complexions. While at Howard, Butler was mentored by members of AfriCOBRA. The artist collective's bright, colorful aesthetic and aim to create positive representations of Black Americans can be found in Butler's body of work, as well. 
Her quilts often feature portraits of famous figures in Black history, such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, and Josephine Baker. She uses a variety of patterned fabrics, which she carefully selects to reflect the subject's life, sometimes using clothing worn by the subject. Her portrait of Nina Simone, for example, is made of cotton, silk, velvet, and netting, while that of Jean-Michel Basquiat is made of leather, cotton, and vintage denim. 
Along with her portraits of notable figures, Butler also creates pieces featuring everyday, unknown African American subjects that she bases off of found photographs. She describes her fascination for her nameless subjects' unknown stories: "I feel these people; I know these stories because I have grown up with them my whole life." She strives "to bring as many of these unnamed peoples photos to the forefront" so "people will see these ordinary folks as deserving of a spotlight too."
Her pieces are done in life scale in order "to invite the viewer to engage in dialogue--most figures look the viewers directly in their eyes."
Exhibitions.
She has exhibited widely. In 2018 she exhibited at EXPO Chicago and was praised in "Newcity" and the "Chicago Reader". In February 2019 her work was included along with that of Romare Bearden in "The Art of Jazz", a Black History Month exhibition in Morristown, New Jersey. Butler's quilts are featured in art books such as "Journey of Hope: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama" (2010) and "Collaborations: Two Decades of African American Art : Hearne Fine Art 1988-2008" (2008), and on websites such as Blavity and Colossal. In 2019, she was a finalist for the Museum of Art and Design's Burke Prize. Butler's first solo museum exhibition "Bisa Butler: Portraits" was co-organized between the Art Institute of Chicago and the Katonah Museum of Art. It was scheduled to first open at the Katonah Museum of Art from March 15 to June 14, 2020; however, after temporarily closing due to COVID-19 the exhibition was extended to October 4, 2020. 