Can Butler Rewrite History Through Quilt Portraits?

It is not unusual to mistake Bisa Butler’s work for a painting — in fact, Erica Warren, the curator who first discovered the creative spirit, too, mistook her work as a painting, and it was only upon getting a closer look did she realize that the seven feet tall portraits were a composition of textiles and portraiture. The luminaire uses the technique of quilting for weaving stories that have remained unheard of and are lost in time. If there was an example for Wangechi Mutu’s definition of artists as “tattletale” it would be without a doubt, Butler.

As artists, when we work on an artwork, the duration from the start to its completion is filled with our ardent thoughts and feelings. The final work serves as a magnifying lens of our personal beliefs for the onlooker, and finally, what is perceived by the viewer is often important for us. When half the population of land remains unidentified and forgotten by history, the story is only half complete. Having heard the whispers of her community since childhood, the unknown and lost are familiar to her. She reckons as an artist, it is her responsibility to document her people through a lens of dignity.

As a Black woman herself, her work has always focused on Black identity. She believes art is a medium to rewrite history in a manner that would evoke the onlookers’ feelings and help create a dialogue for equality.

Her subjects, apart from her family, are based on the black-and-white photographs of African American people from the World War II era as well as photographs of unrecorded Black people dating from 1870 to 1910. Working on these black-and-white photographs gives her an opportunity to reimagine these people in various lifestyles, allowing them to be ordinary humans.

Walking in an art gallery, we certainly cannot miss her exploding coloured quilt portraits. The idea of using the bright, technicolour fabrics to showcase the black skin arose from the palette used by African Americans to refer to their complexions. Talking about her choice of fabric, she explains that the textiles used in her work consist of deeper meanings than meets the eye. “I use West-African wax-printed fabric, kente cloth, and Dutch wax prints to communicate that my figures are of African descent and have a long, rich history behind them.” Every stitch of her portrait is a story in itself.

Among her popular works is the portrait “The Four Little Girls” which is her way of paying respect to the four little girls that were killed in a racially motivated bombing in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963. With the recent racial attacks making headlines, her work has seen an increased interest from the public. Michele Wije, a curator, in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine, July 24, 2020, explains, “the [Butler’s] work is very relevant to this moment in history when we are seeing a societal reckoning over racial inequity.”

With a quick glance at her portraits, one is certainly reminded of Bertolt Brecht’s illustration of art.

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