Career

Sadie Barnette Made Art out of Her Father’s Black Panther FBI File

The artist on surveillance and the role of art in activism.

Sadie Barnette Made Art out of Her Father’s Black Panther FBI File
Anna-Alexia Basile

There are many ways one might be expected to react when reading one’s own father’s FBI file closely chronicling his activities during his time with the Black Panthers. But Sadie Barnette, who did exactly this, made them into art. She’s exhibited the work a few times already—in New York and Oakland, where she’s based—but seeing the piece (which she changes and reworks with each new show) in her studio with the artist herself was, if we’re being honest, a little bit mind-bending.

First, there’s the sheer scale of the work—pages and pages of typed material she narrowed down from the 500-page file mounted on the wall—that requires you to stand back. But as you get closer and actually read the material—that agents talked to neighbors and employers about Barnette’s father; that he was on a list that would allow the agency to detain him at any time—it becomes a completely different kind of art, but art nonetheless. Barnette always works with mixed media; she loves glitter and jewels and sparkles. Her studio—huge, airy, and in a building she shares with other artists and a family of chickens kept in a coop in the yard—is full of pop-culture ephemera, like a box of Wheaties emblazoned with Stephen Curry’s face. It’s also full of her work and works in progress, hung as it would be in a gallery. Speaking of, Barnette is giving the FBI file its next moment in the spotlight with a new solo show called Dear 1968,... at UC Davis’ Manetti Shrem Museum. If you can, you should see it—click through the gallery to find out why.


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“The first time I really realized that I had something to say was with this organization called Destiny Arts Center in Oakland. It’s still around and grown into an amazing community center and helps with violence prevention through dance and martial arts. They also have a performance company where high school kids write their own monologues and talk about issues that affect them, and that was a really powerful experience. In high school that I got really into photography. I wasn’t the best student—I went to this giant public high school in Berkeley, it was totally underfunded. I saw so much inequity and racism and criminalization of youth that I pretty much checked out of high school. Then I did this independent studies program and they had a dark room on that campus that the photography teacher built in like a portable. I’d be printing photographs eight hours a day. I think being alone and being able to shoot out in the world and spending time with those images really spoke to me. People were applying to college and I was like, ‘Well, I’ve been taking all these photographs, I guess I could apply to art school.’ I went to Calarts and that totally changed my life and really opened up the contemporary art world that I hadn’t known about. I had some amazing mentors there, and it’s such a strong community that it continues to really be a part of my life and my work.”

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