CΔCHING OUT @ Manetti Shrem Museum

 "...My interest in minimalism and conceptualism informs the way I look at my family, our history, subculture coding, celebration and resistance. I engage a hybrid aesthetic of minimalism and density, using text, glitter and found objects to demonstrate the necessity for poetry and abstraction in urban life and the power of the personal as political..." 

 

-Sadie Barnette, artist statement, 2016

 

The newest art museum in the University of California system, the Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis, has delivered a politically and personally charged exhibit of Oakland and Compton based artist, Sadie Barnette. Barnette’s first solo museum showcase Dear 1968,... is located in an isolated space within the museum, and fully utilizes all four walls to enact meaning and make public the narrative of her family’s history, and specifically her father, Rodney Barnette’s close involvement with the Black Panther Party. Dear 1968,... is a comprehensive exhibit which shares ideas of revolution, family, surveillance, memory, and identity. 

Untitled (Dad 1966 and 1968), 2016, C-Prints; Special Agent, 2017, Custom Wall Vinyl

The space is dominated by text and color. Black and white FBI documents, signatures, and stamps are contrasted by the whimsical embellishments of neon and jewel stickers. Dear 1968,...is a photographic installation that employs unique methods that go beyond the frame. Barnette re-frames the significance of the revolutionary year of 1968 by enveloping her viewers in an installation which includes vinyl wallpaper with repetitive imagery. The scale of these repetitive wallpaper patterns sets the backdrop for the photographs which are displayed on top and literally layer the exhibit with meaning. Special Agent, the custom wall vinyl, repeats bureaucratic phrases like "confidential," "not recorded," etc. and display the United States seal as well. Untitled 1968 and 1969, in which Sadie Barnette's father was photographed in his uniform from the Vietnam War and later dressed in his Black Panther Party uniform, creates a dialogue between the impersonal government icons to a very personal, familial experience. Although Sadie Barnette was not present for this era in history, her connection to this revolutionary context set the foundation for her life and artistic trajectory. 

My Father's FBI File, Project III, 2017, Aerosol Paint and Rhinestones on Twenty-Eight Laser Prints, Mounted on Neon Pink Plexiglass

My Father's FBI File, Project III, 2017, Aerosol Paint and Rhinestones on Twenty-Eight Laser Prints, Mounted on Neon Pink Plexiglass


The longest wall in Dear 1968,... displays a selection of 28 FBI documents horizontally. Titled, My Father's FBI File, Project III, this series stresses the close surveillance and intrusion Rodney Barnette and his family experienced as he was watched while founding the Compton chapter of the BPP. The original file is 500 pages, and the Barnette family procured them through the Freedom of Information Act. This work significantly shows the artist's intentional imprint by making her mark upon these documents.  Sadie Barnette mounted all 28 laser prints on neon pink plexiglass, bedazzled them with rhinestones, and applied black and pink aerosol paint. This is not merely done in a childlike, decorative manner; this is an act of personal vandalism for decolonizing the government's watchful eye upon her family. The neon pink also functions to illuminate the documents, to draw attention to the artist's personal composition of making the private both public and personal, with embellishments that assert and celebrate her own presence in this genealogy.

Untitled (Two Friends), 2016, Collage and Spray Paint on Paper

The adjacent wall includes a combination of personal snapshots. These snapshots are arranged in a scrapbook style, separated by different frames but altogether furthering her minimalist aesthetic. They are individually collaged with holographic paper, graphite drawings, aerosol paint, and sometimes rhinestones. These photos hold a certain nostalgic aura, and again, impose Barnette's touch upon a certain time and place, within these memories. Some images, such as Untitled (Two Friends), place a small scale image upon a large white surface. This technique creates the illusion of distance, and contributes to the understanding that the memory is far away, but also present and re-envisioned per Barnette's sentiment.

Untitled (Dad's Mugshot), 2016, Graphite on Paper; Untitled (J. Edgar Hoover) 2016, Graphite on Paper; The Living Room, 2017, Custom Wall Vinyl

Detail of The Living Room

The exhibition closes with a wall vinyl installation, and two framed images. The wall vinyl, The Living Room, consists of an image of a small black child sitting in a chair, appropriating the style of the iconic image of Huey Newton, BPP leader. The child, however, does not hold a spear and a gun in its hand like Newton, but rather has a pink chevron mark covering its face. This implies the powerful representation of the figure and the movement, while simultaneously protecting the identity of the child in a domestic space. The image with the child is then rotated and repeated in a kaleidoscope pattern and covers the entire moveable wall. Untitled (Dad's Mug Shot) and Untitled (J. Edgar Hoover), both graphite drawings on paper, are displayed on the Living Room wall vinyl. In one final visual statement, Sadie Barnette concludes the exhibition with the image of her father next to the impersonal signature of the FBI director who labelled the BPP as a serious threat to the government's security.

Barnette directly comments on the pervasive and invasive investigation of her family, her father's role in the BPP, and the personal, political and public implications of the investigation. Barnette's use of color in Dear 1968,... interrupts the either or, black and/or white aesthetic of the government documents with her own re-imagining of these events, and places herself to actively re-claim black identity in a radical and imperative social history.  

Dear 1968,... is on display at the Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis until June 30. For more information visit their website www.manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu.