Local Artist Sadie Barnette Merges Public and Private Space in Manetti Shrem Exhibit
Emma Hoppough
In its sixth month of operation, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Arthas disrupted its white walls with a new exhibitby Oakland-based artist and activist Sadie Barnette. “Dear 1968,…” examines the personal and political histories surrounding a 500-page FBI document that tracks the artist’s father—a former section leader of the Black Panther Party—through the exhibit’s titular era. Speaking to the Davis community on April 30, Barnette and her father, Rodney, discussed the files, the project and their relevance to today’s social and political climate. Although “Dear 1968…” could easily tell the story of a man violated by his country, Sadie Barnette uses her photo selection, exhibit positioning and hot pink graffiti to paint an equally strong tale of resistance.
Assembling a Past
Although “Dear 1968…” currently sits on full display at the Manetti Shrem, its images originate from concealed, intimate moments processed through years of surveillance. In her talk at the museum, Barnette described how her project first developed outside the art world, within her own home, when her father Rodney filed a Freedom of Information Act request. As a former leader with the Black Panther Party, a political organization that aimed to protect African Americans from brutality and exploitation, Rodney Barnette suspected that he had been the object of government scrutiny. He was correct.
Expecting a 20-page document at most, the Barnettes were shocked to receive hundreds of government pages that had passed through hundreds of anonymous hands before theirs. Cut-out redactions, detailed family trees and handwritten notes signaled the investigation’s scope, as well as the many eyes that had scanned its details. As the family combed furiously through the files, Rodney Barnette, a Vietnam War veteran and former employee of the United States Post Office, held proof that the country he fought for had viewed him as an enemy. “It’s an all-American story,” remarked Sadie Barnette in her talk. “And yet…”
Observing Surveillance
Though Sadie Barnette concluded her thought with a pause, her exhibition illustrates the tension, violence and confusionthat her words left hanging. Almost 50 years after the events in question, the artist repossesses the Manetti as she does her family’s history: sheathing the formerly blank space in handmade wallpaper to surround family photos and FBI documents with continued surveillance, Barnette simultaneously positions images of her father to “stare back” at his former investigators. The result reads like a reconfigured family album tinged with disconcerting revelations and revisions.
By welcoming viewers into the exhibit, Sadie Barnette adds a new layer of both privacy and publicity to these documents. Her carefully selected document pages move chronologically across the wall, each bordered with an eerie pink haze. Of the 28 pages that Barnette has chosen, many demonstrate the FBI’s trivial yet unrelenting observations of Rodney Barnette’s daily activities, like the date and time he was seen boarding a plane—an event forgotten by Rodney Barnette himself. Other selections, like one that casually lists Rodney’s deceased peers from the Black Panther Party, bear more obvious danger. Vacillating unsettlingly between these commonplace scenes and overtly sinister events, Sadie Barnette expertly reconstructs her father’s personal experiences through memories told in the third person.
Fighting for the Future
The artist does not conclude her exhibit with feelings of helplessness, however. Instead, she decorates these moments with rhinestones and blurs them with pink spray paint. Her additions (like childlike graffiti, innocent rebellion) censor and accentuate the documents with her own perspective and power. She distracts from FBI descriptions of her father with purple heart gems to remind viewers of her father’s service. She places crowns above names of deceased Black Panther members to honor them with an ultimately artificial attempt at resolution. She stamps her wallpaper with the government’s “Racial Interest” markings to heighten the tension between the political emblem and her own markings that push against it.
As both an artist and citizen, Barnette wants audiences to fight for their humanity, and her work reminds audiences of their ability to do so in the most helpless of situations. If this is not clear enough in her work, it comes through in her community talks. Before meeting with the general community on April 30, the artist had already spoken with multiple groups across the UC Davis campus—students in the UC Davis School of Law, the Master’s of Fine Arts program, and the Black Student Union and Cross Cultural Center—to discuss privacy and surveillance, race politics in present-day America and what it means to create art as a means of resistance. Speaking to students the same age as Rodney Barnette was when he first joined the Black Panther Party, Sadie Barnette brings awareness to her family’s story as it stands for the history of many: the oppressed, marginalized, targeted groups that exist within—and despite—the government’s supervision. Her work urges audiences to recognize their personal and political power and to reclaim it, in public and in private, if only through a defiant streak of pink spray paint.
The exhibit “Dear 1968, ...” will remain in the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art until June 30, 2017.
Emma Hoppough is a third-year transfer student attending UC Davis. She studies English and plans to double minor in Studio Art and Professional Writing.