Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon

About

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) presents Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon in the Project Room. For her first solo museum presentation in Los Angeles, Barnette will reimagine the Eagle Creek Saloon, the first black-owned gay bar in San Francisco which was established by the artist’s father Rodney Barnette, founder of the Compton, CA chapter of the Black Panther Party. From 1990–93 Barnette’s father operated the bar and offered a safe space for the multiracial LGBTQ community who were marginalized at other social spaces throughout the city at that time.

Barnette engages the aesthetics of Minimalism and Conceptualism through an idiosyncratic use of text, decoration, photographs, and found objects that approach the speculative and otherworldly. Barnette’s recent drawings, sculptures, and installations have incorporated the 500-page FBI surveillance file kept on her father and references to West Coast funk and hip-hop culture to consider the historical and present-day dynamics of race, gender, and politics in the United States. Using materials such as spray paint, crystals, and glitter, she transforms the bureaucratic remnants from a dark chapter in American history into vibrant celebrations of personal, familial, and cultural histories and visual acts of resistance. The New Eagle Creek Saloon is a glittering bar installation that exists somewhere between a monument and an altar, at once archiving the past and providing space for potential. During the run of the exhibition at ICA LA, the installation will be activated by performances, talks, and other social events.