Textiles and Dress

Bisa Butler

Bisa Butler (born Mailissa Yamba Butler in 1973) is an African American fiber artist who is credited with creating a new genre of quilting, using photographs, sketches, and vivid traditional textiles to create vibrant life-size portraits in fabric. She is known for celebrating Black life and identity, portraying both everyday people and notable historical figures. Although quilting has long been considered a craft, Butler's use of interdisciplinary methods to create elaborate quilts that look like paintings is bringing recognition both to her work and to the medium of quilting as a whole, as a fine art form. Butler's works have been exhibited widely and are in the permanent collections of museums including the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Pérez Art Museum Miami. In 2020, she was commissioned to quilt cover images for Time magazine, including the "Person of the Year" issue and the "100 Women of the Year" issue.

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See also

• ▸Fashion Revolution
• ▸Anti-aircraft Defences
• ▸Bede Griffiths

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