PHONE HOME by Sadie Barnette is on view at the Museum of the African Diaspora (January 16-April 14, 2019.)
Barnette is a former artist-in-residence at the Studio museum, her work has been featured here on the West Coast in, All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50 at OMCA and is currently on view at MoAD. Her work is situated at a unique intersection between East Coast bearings (that’s where you go to get popping) and West Coast aesthetics (something extremely unique to us).
I relate to Sadie’s work personally as an Oakland native and resident. I think there's some genetic or spatial memory going on.
PHONE HOME is directly related to the pieces on the second and third floors Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem on view January 16-April 14, 2019. The tie in is that many of the artists in Black Refractions are also former artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
The Studio Museum is recognized as a cultural beacon for African descendants to showcase and make space for their work in the greater artistic cosmos. I have chosen to not to write about the larger show because I know what I am supposed to know through research, but not necessarily through feeling about the broader show.
It took me a while to figure out how to write this, for fear of the, “art world criticism.” Whatever the fuck that is, anyway art is about interpretation. I hope this gives anyone reading the courage to write about their run in’s with art because the viewer is often more artistic than the past has given credit for…This post is my rendition, you know, personal experience backed by a bit of google to confirm what I knew to be true intuitively.
Let’s get into it.
PHONE HOME
The exhibition space has been activated: textural, and sensory. No longer the lobby, storefront or passageway from the museum to the St. Regis hotel, but rather access to different directions on the cosmic plane, past, present, and future.
When my shoes hit the hot pink carpet, without my willingness or complicity, I felt as if they had been removed. I sensed that I’d crossed the threshold into something sacred.
The space is pink from top to bottom. The color sits on your eyes like a weighted blanket, lulling. Not in a “blush and bashful” romantic kind of way (shout out to Shelby from Steel Magnolias) but more so uneasy. It feels like all the air has been removed, towing a thin line between warmth and suffocation. I waited for the artist’s social commentary to direct my eye, but realized I was being called to complete the picture. Something like the Rorschach test do you remember Gnarls Barkley's Crazy video? Yea those. That space where whatever you see is a reflection of you.
Untitled, Phone Home 2019, MoAD
The piece pictured above is so simple, but it struck a chord within me. I saw pedigree and constellations. The piece is Untitled and a part of the mixed media installation. By appearances and not by touch an 8x11” piece of medium to heavy weight paper, a cut out colored photograph of a baby girl’s head, two lines extending from her ear with spheres connected, and one extension connected to another sphere.
The entire image comprises no more than a forth of the page, uncentered, floating, and yet linear. I wanted to know who the baby was related to and what the rest of her story is or will be. Are we the missing link? Can anyone fill in the blank spots? Perhaps it’s what I am trying to do personally and artistically that calls me to the piece. That is to capture stories around bloodlines, generations, healing, breaking cycles, and all of the things one needs to understand to know what we are fighting. Knowing where you come from to try and understand where you are going.
BIT OF GOOGLE TO BACK IT UP
In a 2017 interview with Essence Harden, Sadie Barnette was asked about her use of expansive white space. Her response:
““I often employ this large expanse of negative, white space to take these figures out of their context. Perhaps, in a way, it’s an act of liberation, but also could be a bit disrupting. You’re in a non-space, and maybe the viewer can project, on to that space, a better future, or maybe they’re projecting onto it a lack of a world; a non-belonging, or emptiness if you will.” ”
I enjoyed what I heard by way of what I saw in the void.
TELEPHONE BADU
When I saw the corded phone at the end of the hallway there was a pulse, as if it were ringing or someone was on the other end. I felt it was connected to “other” side. By the other side I mean spirit. I heard Erykah Badu’s song, Telephone.
“Telephone
It’s Ol’ Dirty
He wants to give you directions home
Said it won’t be too long
The day is gone”
I knew I loved that song for a long time, but can we talk about how deep that song is for a minute? Ok picture it, lets walk back to google, I didn’t know prior to googling that Telephone was written in memory of J. Dilla.
The paraphrased story is: Badu said Dilla’s mom told her he would “hallucinate” towards the end of this lifetime. She asked him who he would talk to when he was a bit more present on this side. He responded that he was talking to Ol’ Dirty Bastard (ODB/Dirt McGirt). ODB told him not to get on the red bus although it looked fun it wasn’t the right one. He told Dilla to take the white bus.
My take was the route leading to the light or the not so light. Goosebumps.
To bring it back into the physical context of a reminiscent era or an era gone by there was something really special about corded phones. A string of physical lines connecting us. When you phoned home and someone picked up you knew where they were, where the phone was situated, the lighting, perhaps even what they wore. You knew someone was where they said they were, or would be. There’s something very special about those moments in time.
INTERSECTIONS & SPATIAL MEMORY
I thought I’d met the artist Sadie before in person then realized it was another artist Lady Phoenix. Not that all black people look alike, I am simply horrible with names. I can remember addresses by landmark, dogs names, colors worn, but when it comes to names I’m no good. Charge it to my head and not my heart.
I let her [Sadie] know how the work made me feel and shared the fact that I was from Oakland. She said, not necessarily on the record or off, that (paraphrased) she truly enjoys how much she doesn’t have to directly state that something is from Oakland for people from Oakland to understand and relate to her work.
I didn’t make the connection at the time that I’d seen Sadie’s artwork in the Oakland Museum of California’s All Power To The People: Black Panthers at 50 exhibition. When I saw her work at OMCA it was shortly after my father’s ex-girlfriend dropped off his photo albums, love letters, resumes, court documents, etc. By dropped off I mean left on the porch honey. That’s called cleaning house. What are the chances?
Sadies work around her father’s FBI files caused me to think critically about my father’s incarceration story. Universal alignment is trippy.
There’s also a lot of genetic, geological, and place based memory operating within her work. From what I’ve seen we’ve had parallel experiences around race, womanhood, social justice, living in the Bay, and musical stylings.
PHONE HOME is described as providing, “refuge for those seeking moments of comfort in the reflection of their own light.” Most definitely because I just projected a whole bunch of my personal shit on that exhibition space. Real or imagined.
Thank you for the space that you are allowing us as a people to take up, and thank you for providing a space for us to have dialogue with one another and within! Blessings.
THANK YOU
Special thank you to Mark & Paul for inviting me to the press preview and opening reception. We used to work together and now we still do, just in another way. Thank you for providing space for me to grow. By universal design that support has led to other people supporting me along the way. To the press preview and opening I brought my notebook, an early 2010s DSLR on loan to me, and a lot of fear when I entered that building. I didn’t know which lens did what, but by asking Paul there were two other gentlemen who said, “whats that you have there?” From there they were willing to help me sort through camera settings. I suppose the message in layman’s terms is when you simply try to live your best creative life, there are people on the other side of that fear with open arms.
I wanted to also say that I think I was able to lay down a lot of the past traumas experienced working in the “arts”. Thank you for being a part of my healing process. That opening reception confirmed that we are good peoples, and extensions of a wonderful mix of communities tied to the museum. Please continue to place the link to RSVP on IG, ya’ll brought in some new energy, and by partnering with the Studio Museum you let a lot of light into the space.
The East Coast is litty and the Bay is home. Thank you all, and until soon.
Love ya’ll and loving this journey.
J.