Winfield St

2018 - Photography (Photography)

129.54 x 152.4 cm

Sadie Barnette

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Winfield St by Sadie Barnette depicts a seldom documented scene of men and boys in an intimate domestic setting. In the large format photograph three young boys and a man sit at a dining room table, eating a meal together. One boy is mid-bite, while another looks directly at the camera, obscuring the face of the adult. The photograph has a classic early 70s aesthetic—orange and brown psychedelic wallpaper, a rug of the same colors, and various plants decorate the room. Even the boys outfits echoe the signature colors of the era. The enlarged image is a found photograph of the artist’s father, Rodney Barnette, her half-brother, and two cousins. It is a representation of familial love and nostalgia, as well as grief, as two of the three boys died before turning twenty. Much of Barnette’s work that focuses on her father’s role as leading member of the Black Panthers, highlights the struggle and resistance associated with that political moment. However, in this body of work the artist also makes space to foreground more tender moments of kinship and domesticity that she believes are fundamental to grassroots political organizing.

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Sadie Barnette’s practice calls attention to family and community histories through photography, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Often incorporating abstraction, glitter, and the archive, Barnette grounds her work in acts of celebration, survival, and resistance. Moving in between and merging permutations of public, domestic, and ornamental spaces, the artist offers imaginative and speculative refigurations of the personal as political. Recent projects include the reclamation of a 500-page FBI surveillance file on her father, Rodney barnette, who founded the Compton chapter of the Black Panther Party, and an interactive reimagining of his bar—San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar.

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Colors:

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• family.n.01
• domesticity.n.02
• emotion.n.01
• nostalgia.n.01
• affinity.n.04