Black Lives Are Celebrated In Bisa Butler’s Extraordinary, Technicolor Quilts

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Dear Mama, 2019. Collection of Scott and Cissy Wolfe; Broom Jumpers, 2019. Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Purchase with the Belle and Hy Baier Art Acquisition Fund. Photograph by Margaret Fox





Bisa Butler



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Bisa Butler



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«I describe my artwork as a quilted photo album of a Black family. But it’s the Black diaspora family, says Butler, standing in the exhibition hall and overlooking her work.


She explains that some of the people depicted in her photo album are well known, others just ordinary folk often overlooked. No matter. All are celebrated.

«These ordinary folk who may have been very poor are some people who should be highly regarded, the love in the care that they have for each other, the way they’re presenting themselves, she says. «I see the dignity and the beauty. So I want other people to see that.

This is her first solo museum exhibit, which debuted in New York. Many of the works are based on archival photos from the 1930s and 40s.






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The Safety Patrol, 2018. Cavigga Family Trust Fund. Photograph by Margaret Fox





Bisa Butler



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Bisa Butler





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Like a painter, Butler selects her palette –– a palette that consists of fabrics. Many come from Ghana, her father’s homeland, and other African countries. Her mother, from New Orleans, was raised in Morocco.





John Butler



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John Butler





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Anaya with Oranges, 2017. Dimmitt Davies Collection. Photograph by Margaret Fox





Bisa Butler



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Bisa Butler





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Southside Sunday Morning, 2018. Photograph by Margaret Fox





Bisa Butler



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Bisa Butler




Southside Sunday Morning, 2018. Photograph by Margaret Fox


Bisa Butler

In one gallery, Butler, dressed in an African-print pantsuit as colorful as her portraits, stands in front of a quilt which she calls «Southside Sunday Morning. It’s her version of the iconic photo by Russell Lee, called «Negro Boys on Easter Morning.

The boys dressed in their Sunday best — suits and ties and hats — sit on a car on the South Side of Chicago. There’s no car in the Butler quilt.


«One boy, in the original, his foot is resting on a license plate but I love to show that he’s so «clean, that even the soles of his shoes are clean, she laughs. «And this piece it talks to me about how our community loves our children.

Butler trained as a painter at Howard University before getting her graduate degree at Montclair State University in New Jersey. The Art Institute exhibit also includes the work of artists who influenced her, such as Romare Bearden, photographer Gordon Parks, Barbara Jones Hogu and other members of the AfriCobra collective formed in Chicago in the 1960s to affirm a Black aesthetic in visual arts.


Butler’s artistry, though, is part of a family tradition — a knowledge of textiles and clothing passed down from her mother and grandmother both accomplished seamstresses. Typically considered a craft, Butler agrees the art world is beginning to give quilting its due.

Her «Portraits will remain on display in the fine art galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago until Sept. 6.

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