Sadie Barnette

Sadie Barnette (born 1984, Oakland, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work transforms personal and political archives into sparkling, rebellious landscapes of Black possibility. She is best known for her reimagining of her father’s 500-page FBI surveillance file—an archive of state violence turned into a site of resistance, tenderness, and radical imagination.  Barnette works across drawing, photography, installation, sculpture, and text, often incorporating elements such as glitter, hot pink, spray paint, family photographs, and everyday domestic materials. Her visual language merges West Coast aesthetics with Afrofuturist sensibilities, blending personal narrative with broader histories of Black radical movements, the Black Panther Party, and queer joy.  Her installations frequently construct intimate, hybrid spaces—bedrooms, living rooms, party scenes—where Black life, memory, and pleasure can thrive outside the gaze of the state. Barnette has exhibited at ICA Los Angeles, Oakland Museum of California, The Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1, and countless national and international institutions. She lives and works between Oakland, CA and Los Angeles, CA.