Critical Issues in Contemporary Art Practice: Sadie Barnette

Sadie Barnette utilizes drawing, photography, found objects, family memorabilia, and reimagined social spaces to effect earthly resistance and speculative escape. Combining the glittery, maximalist aesthetics of her childhood with the necessity of political resistance, her recent works engage as primary source material the 500-page FBI surveillance file kept on her father, Rodney Barnette, who founded the Compton, California, chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968. In the artist’s hands, these repressive documents are reclaimed—splashed with pink spray paint and adorned with crystals—in an intergenerational assertion of the power of the personal as political. Born in 1984 in Oakland, California, her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally. She is a recipient of the Art Matters and Artadia awards, and her work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, the California African American Museum, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Guggenheim.

The 2020 Critical Issues Lecture Series takes place on Thursday evenings during winter quarter. It is organized by the School of Art + Art History + Design in collaboration with the Henry Art Gallery. The general public is invited to sit alongside degree-seeking individuals studying fine art in order to share ideas and raise questions about contemporary art. In addition to the public lectures, undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in ART 361/561 interface with the speakers in the classroom and studio.

Computer Aided Real-Time Transcription (CART) is provided.

See the full lineup of 2020 Critical Issues Lectures here.