Black is King by Bisa Butler is a quilted portrait made with cotton, silk, silk and polyester blend with brocade, velvet, lamé, and lace. It measures approximately seven feet tall by five feet wide. It is in vertical orientation, meaning that its shortest side runs parallel to the ground.This portrait is made with an assortment of patterned textiles with bright colors depicting a life-size, slender male figure dressed in colorful suit against a vibrant background. The person is Trevor Stuurman, an award-winning multimedia artist who worked closely with Beyoncé in the 2020 film Black Is King.The background of Stuurman’s portrait is made with neon lime green rose brocade that seamlessly repeats like wallpaper on silky white fabric. His vibrant attire is made with an assortment of Kente cloth and African wax printed fabrics. His skin is depicted unnaturally in shades of bright purple, magenta, orange and red—as if he were being seen through an infrared camera. Hundreds of pieces of fabric have been layered carefully to render the shadows with detail, appearing to blend seamlessly from a distance.Stuurman holds a relaxed but confident pose, with right arm bent and clutching the lapel of his blazer near his heart. He wears a pair of turquoise-colored silky glasses, and a dark teal and black swirl-patterned kufi cap. His blazer alone is constructed with six different patterns. The fabric that depicts his sleeve on our left has a hunter green background dotted with bright red-orange fruits about two inches in diameter. The left side of the jacket that covers his torso has a crimson red background with royal purple abstracted flower patterns of the same size. The lapel on the left contains tiger-like stripes made up of Pan-African flag colors with leopard like lime green spots on top, while its sister lapel has a soft purple and blue background with an intricate floral brocade pattern with purple flowers and stems. The second half of the torso is a bright coral pink paired with baby pink leaf patterns that are about the size of the figure’s hands. The sleeve to our right is a deep indigo or midnight blue with a golden, all-over four-sided star pattern with thin lines that form crisscrossing diagonals connecting them in neat rows.Sturrman’s pant legs are also constructed with two mismatching patterns. The leg on our left has an orange and rust colored pinstripe pattern as a base; the artist has patched it with darker orange and brown pinstripes to show shadows. On top, there are two graphic commercial passenger planes that occupy the length of his shin and upper half of his leg, respectively. The plane on the bottom is a bright fuchsia color and faces up and left, while the plane on top is a bright crimson color and faces upwards to the right. The pant leg on our right has a deep purple base with black shadows. On top of this purple, there are repeating light cloudy blue colored circles that contain a graphic black and white print of a swallow shown from the side during flight.On his feet, Sturrman wears a neon orange pair of Nike Air Force 1s that Butler has constructed with several patterns. Their soles and lining contain the same deep blue star pattern that is found on Sturrman’s right sleeve. The toe boxes of the sneakers have the same teal and black swirl pattern found on his kufi cap. While the Nike logo on their sides, stitching, and tongues are a lime green.