Sadie Barnette: Family Business

Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette’s installation Family Business at the San Jose Museum of Art operates as a kind of “liberation living room”: a private space within a public institution that speaks to Black life in the US. Barnette works through family stories and archives, conveying the political through the personal.

Take a peek at the living room through a dramatic pink glitter rose-tinted window covered with security bars at the entrance to the gallery. Peruse the wall of festooned and bejeweled family photographs and hang out on the silver glitter vinyl-covered sofa and armchair. Watch a video montage of family home movies depicting dancing and celebrations entitled “Almond Street” (2023) with an interpretive drum solo soundtrack. 

Family Business is simultaneously taking place at the Institute of Arts and Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Barnette created monumental and detailed graphite drawings at the university referencing the 500-page dossier the FBI amassed on her father, Rodney Barnette, who founded the Compton chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968.

Institute of the Arts and Sciences, UC Santa Cruz
100 Panetta Avenue, Santa Cruz, California
Through August 13

San Jose Museum of Art (sjmusart.org)
110 South Market Street, San Jose, California
Through October 15

For the full article, please visit 10 Art Shows to See in the Bay Area This Summer.