Bisa Butler

Through her dynamic, celebratory quilted portraits of people of African descent, Bisa Butler (b. 1973, Orange, NJ) investigates the purposes and potential of portraiture within the Black historical narrative. Butler's influences range widely from personal family scrapbooks to American folk traditions and AfriCOBRA philosophies. Although her finished works are made entirely of textiles, Butler approaches the medium from a painterly perspective. Sourcing imagery mainly from photographs, she uses layered fabrics and quilting to create unique compositions, psychological depth, and detailed textures that she found missing from her paintings. By returning to textiles, Butler has reconnected with her family's history, as it was her grandmother and mother who taught her to sew. Bisa Butler lives in South Orange, New Jersey, and has a studio in Jersey City. Butler earned her BFA in painting at Howard University, Washington, D.C., in 1995 and holds an MAT in teaching art from Montclair State University, New Jersey. Her work has been exhibited widely, both domestically and internationally. Bisa was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Bloomfield College and recently received the inaugural Faith in the Arts Award. In 2020, Butler had her first institutional solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Perez Art Museum, Miami. The World Is Yours, Butler’s first solo exhibition with Jeffrey Deitch in 2023 in New York, was enthusiastically received and attracted thousands of visitors.