053: Bisa Butler | Radio Juxtapoz

It's a new season here at Radio Juxtapoz, and where we were hoping that Fall would bring back art openings and a sense of normalcy to our already tumultuous year, we are still a bit in flux. This month we released our newest Fall 2020 Quarterly edition with cover artist Bisa Butler, whose phenomenal and critically-acclaimed year has also become a symbol of the transitions Americans have experienced with social activism and social justice this past summer. The murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd have sparked a worldwide movement and moment of reckoning about how society treats people of color and the dominant histories that denied Black Americans a voice for a better future.

With social media and the power of technology helping push new powerful narratives and ways to engage with the BLM movement, we look to one of the most antiquated and handmade of the arts, the quilt, as the centerpiece of this episode. Bisa Butler is a textile artist, whose quilts appear like paintings with their incredible details and patters and almost life-like features. And yet her figures and the stories she tells, from the attire of her characters to an iconic image of Frederick Douglass, are about a re-telling of American history. The people lost to our distant memories or stories never told that helped shape our society and the ways we perceive what it is to be American, Butler is literally re-stitching that history on elegant thread at a time. As Jewels Dodson so eloquently wrote in our cover story, "Bisa Butler’s work has elevated the quilt and innovated the portrait, creating a formidable seat for them at the table of contemporary art. She has brought the black historical narrative and imagery of the past back into focus. At a time where black people’s humanity can be stolen in 8 minutes and 46 seconds and broadcast for all the world to see, Butler’s work is a much needed reminder that the lives of Black people always have and always will matter."

In this conversation, Juxtapoz editor Evan Pricco and Butler discuss how a year of triumph in a year of pain has shaped the artist, how and where she sources her materials, her evolving relationship with textiles, how the pandemic changed her year, how the art world has evolved with more Black artists and just the overwhelming moment of America in transition.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 053 was recorded via Skype from San Francisco and New Jersey, September 7, 2020. Follow Bisa Butler @bisabutler