Sadie Barnette

Scott Pavilion
Riley CAP Gallery S8

Working across drawing, sculpture, photography, and installation, Sadie Barnette mines both personal narratives and collective histories, exploring how the two intersect and diverge over the course of one’s life. Her exhibition in the CAP Gallery centers on a recording she discovered on a doorbell security camera. In the short black-and-white video, the artist’s father, Rodney Barnette, is seen removing helium balloons from the trunk of a car. As he wrangles the inflatables—a gift for the artist’s mother—a single heart-shaped balloon floats away without his notice, prompting a bewildered search of the vehicle. Upon reviewing the footage, the younger Barnette recognized that an easily overlooked episode had many stories to tell—about gestures of affection, about bearing witness to everyday life, and about the transformation of a fleeting moment into the stuff of family lore.

Rodney Barnette is a recurring figure in his daughter’s work. A founding member of the Compton, California chapter of the Black Panther Party, he was the subject of extensive FBI surveillance in the 1960s and 70s. For earlier projects, the artist altered documents from government files using playful imagery and seductive materials like glitter and rhinestones to subvert the efforts of those who sought to define her father through a narrow and vicious lens. In this exhibition, Barnette reconsiders her role as storyteller. Rather than upending an existing narrative, as she did with the FBI materials, the artist expands the tale of the escaped heart balloon through a small collection of objects: a sculpture, a bench, a drawing, and the video, titled I didn’t make art about you because you were a Black Panther I made art about you because you are my dad. Each work offers a slightly different perspective on the event in question, encouraging visitors to acknowledge the profundity of the seemingly unremarkable moments in their own lives.