Bisa Butler via MATRIX

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If You Can't Stand the Heat

Image above is from the base of the cross in front of the church of São Francisco do Paraguaçu in the Bahian Recôncavo

Sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes, stoked and steamed and sensual in the widest sense of the word, limned in cadenced song, Brazil is a conundrum wrapped in a smile inside an irony...

It is not a European nation. It is not a North American nation. It is not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin. It was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people). Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David. Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof. Nowhere else but here.

Oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption — elements of these are still strongly entrenched — have defined, delineated, and limited Brazil.

But strictured & bound as it has been and is, Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of — or perhaps because of — the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.

For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...

Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música!"* - Raymundo Sodré

And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.

Welcome to the kitchen!

* "Where there is misery, there is music!" Remarked during a conversation arcing from Bahia to Haiti and Cuba to New Orleans and the south side of Chicago and Harlem to the villages of Ireland and the gypsy camps and shtetls of Eastern Europe...

Bisa Butler I RECOMMEND

CURATION

from this node by: Sparrow/Pardal

This is the Universe of

Name: Bisa Butler
City/Place: Newark, New Jersey
Country: United States

Life & Work

Bio: In my work I am telling the story— The African American side— of this American life. History is the story of men and women but the narrative is controlled by those who hold the pen.

My community has been marginalized for hundreds of years. While we have been right beside our white counterparts experiencing and creating history our contributions and very perspectives have been ignored, unrecorded and lost. Only a few years ago that it was acknowledged that the white house was built by slaves. Right there in the seat of power of our country, African Americans were creating and contributing but who knew who these people were and what their names were. These unacknowledged African Americans had stories, families although they were not considered or treated as equals.

My subjects are African Americans from ordinary walks of life who who may have sat for a formal family portrait or may have been documented by a passing photographer.

These unknown stories fascinate me. I feel these people; I know these stories because I have grown up with them my whole life. I know about my grandmother’s birth at home in Plaquemine Parish, Louisiana; I know about my Aunt Sheila whose family left Mississippi for Chicago in the 1940s; I know about my own father who left Ghana in 1960 with a scholarship to study in the United States and had a suitcase with one shirt and one pair of pants in it. I know the pride in hard work and the dignity of these people because they are my people. I can imagine their lives because they are me and I am them. I grew up listening to the tales of my elders and I heard about what it felt like to be cold and hungry but we still have love and family.

I have a degree from Howard University, a Historically Black University in Washington D.C that was founded when America was segregated by race. Education was looked at as a pathway to a brighter future . The historically black colleges educated the first doctors, lawyers and professionals in this country and to this day graduate more African American professionals than any of the other colleges in this country. It is at Howard that I was taught by the AfriCOBRA ( The African Commune of Bad and Relevant Artists) founders like Jeff Donaldson who was my Dean of Fine Arts, and Frank Smith and Wadswoth Jarell who were professors. We were taught to be proud of our African Heritage and to always present our people in a positive light. They taught us that we had a responsibility to document and correct the misinformation that had been told about our people, and about Africa. We were to use our art as a tool to tell our side of the story to the masses and the mainstream.

I quilt because this was the technique that was taught to me at home. I could sew before I ever painted on a canvas. My mother and grandmother while not quilters sewed garments almost every day. African Americans have been quilting since we were brought to this country and needed to keep warm. Enslaved people were not given large pieces of fabric and had to make do with the scraps of cloth that were left after clothing wore out. With these bits of cloth African American quilts displayed . My own pieces are reminiscent of this tradition but I use African fabrics from my father’s homeland of Ghana, batiks from Nigeria, and prints from South Africa. My subjects are adorned with and made up of the cloth of our ancestors. If these visages are to be recreated and seen for the first time in a century I want them to have their African ancestry back, I want them to take their rightful place in American history. I want the viewer to see the subjects as I see them.

I feel driven to tell my side of the story---that African Americans have a lot to be proud of; that we take care and love our children; that we believe in family; we value education; we work hard and we belong here. Every human being is equal and I hope people see that when they view my work. A billionaire has no more or no less value than someone who sweeps floors. We are all in this together and until we know both sides of the story, our history will be incomplete.

I hope people view my work and feel the value and equality of all people. By presenting all of my figures with a richness and dignity they deserve whether they are from a humble background or the upper classes. All of my pieces are done in life scale to invite the viewer to engage in a dialogue— the figures all look the viewers directly in their eyes.

I am inviting a reimagining and a contemporary dialogue about age old issues that are still problematic in our culture through the comforting embracing medium of the quilt. I am expressing what I believe; the equal value of all humans.