#5WomenArtists: Sadie Barnette

Can you name five women artists?

Since 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts  has been asking this question on social media each March during Women’s History Month using the hashtag #5WomenArtists. The campaign calls attention to the fact that women have not been treated equally in the art world, and today they remain dramatically underrepresented and undervalued in museums, galleries, and auction houses.

Black women are doubly underrepresented in this context, often absent from in America’s museums and erased from the art world’s consciousness. With an eye towards changing that, CAAM will be sharing images and biographies of five women artists from CAAM’s permanent collection.

Sadie Barnette

Sadie Barnette
Untitled (Dog Bone), 2015
Spray paint, collage, and sticker on paper
15 1/3 x 12 1/2 in.
Collection of the California African American Museum. Gift of an anonymous donor

Sadie Barnette
Untitled (Bouncy Castle), 2015
Archival pigment print on paper
15 1/3 x 12 1/2 in.
Collection of the California African American Museum. Gift of an anonymous donor

Sadie Barnette
Untitled (Funzone), 2015
Graphite and sticker on found racing form
15 1/3 x 12 1/2 in.
Collection of the California African American Museum. Gift of anonymous donor.

In these mixed-media works, Sadie Barnette conveys a playful, idealized sense of black childhood using glitter, stickers, gemstones, an NBA star, and a child’s dental advertisement gilded in shining gold. The glitter in particular suggests a sense of euphoria and escape, which the artist considers crucial to maintaining sanity amid the stresses of urban life. For Barnette, the personal is always political, as she incorporates poetry and abstraction into different aspects of daily existence, merging the quotidian and the transcendent.

Other 2019 #5WomenArtists selections:

<em>

• Lisa Diane Wedgeworth
• Ronda Brown
• April Bey
• Dominique Moody</em>