KMA’s Virtual Bisa Butler Exhibit

KMA’s Virtual Bisa Butler Exhibit: The Katonah Museum of Art recently posted a virtual museum tour of their Bisa Butler Portraits exhibition on their website – but we the slideshow which you can also find there. KMA’s Bisa Butler: Portraits exhibition is the first solo museum exhibition of the artist’s work. It features 25-30 of her vivid, larger-than-life quilts that capture African American identity and culture. The show opened on March 15 and was to run through June 14, 2020, when it was scheduled to travel to the Art Institute of Chicago.

More about Bisa Butler: Portraits: KMA

Butler, a formally trained African American artist of Ghanaian heritage, broaches the dividing line between creating with paints on canvas and creating with fiber by fashioning magnificent quilts and elevating a medium hitherto designated as craft into one that is clearly high art. While quilts have historically been isolated in the history of art as the products of working women. Butler’s work not only acknowledges this tradition, but also reinvents it. Continuing with an aesthetic set in motion by artists such as Romare Bearden and Faith Ringgold, Butler forges an individual and expressive signature style that draws upon her own cultural background and experiences. Her emergence as a quilt artist began humbly when she constructed a quilt for her dying grandmother mainly as a means of comfort.

The quilts are vibrant portraits of African American life.  For each, Butler takes inspiration from photographs. She creates a story around each image. And, in her choice of fabrics, she uses texture, color and the cultural origin of the cloth as part of a personal iconography. Each makes statements about society and identity.

African painted cotton and mud cloth tells the story of her ancestral homeland. Vintage lace and aged satin might demonstrate the delicacy and refinement of times past. While multi-colored organza and layered netting convey a story of someone colorful and multifaceted. The constructed nature of the work relies on piecing and stitching. And acknowledges the traditions of needlework normally associated with women and domesticity. Butler subverts this notion through her choice of motifs, embellishments, patterning and scale. All drawn from African textiles. What results are stunning works that transform family memories and cultural practices into works of social statement.

Many of her works are portraits of family members such as her maternal grandparents – Francis and Viloette, her father and her grandfather. She also pays homage to many cultural icons of African-American life such as Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Barack Obama’s election in her One Vote Can Change the World, Black Lives Matter and the “Graffiti” Artist Basquiat, Richard Wesley’s play The Mighty Giants, and Atlanta’s Morris Brown College. Much of her work is deeply reflective. But her work comes alive in a very universal way in her portrayal of children in Southside Sunday Morning and especially in her celebrations of young girls, specifically in The Princess, Four Little Girls and the portrait of her goddaughter Anaya With Oranges.

KMA’s Virtual Bisa Butler Slideshow: