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Artist Bisa Butler creates vibrant portraits with needle and thread, weaving culture, art and history into electrifying quilts.
Her pieces meld old and new, past and future, history and hope. She transforms the traditional craft of quilting into a mosaic of fabric creating portraits of Black American history.
Her quilts have been on exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Smithsonian. Her new exhibit up now at the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in New York is called “The World is Yours.”
Here & Now’s Scott Tong talks with Butler from her art studio in South Orange, New Jersey, where she creates bigger-than-life images out of scraps of cloth.
“Don’t Tread On Me, God Damn, Let’s Go!— The Harlem Hellfighters” by Bisa Butler. (Courtesy of Lee Stalsworth)
Installation views of “Bisa Butler: The World Is Yours” at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, 2023. (Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York)
“Colored Entrance” (after Department Store, Mobile, Alabama by Gordon Parks, 1956) (Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of Bisa Butler and Jeffrey Deitch, New York)
The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake. (Courtesy of Bisa Butler)
Installation views of “Bisa Butler: The World Is Yours” at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, 2023. (Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York)
by Bisa Butler. (Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of Bisa Butler and Jeffrey Deitch, New York)
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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