by Hannah Weaver
An overflowing crowd gathered inside and outside the newly opened Benton Museum of Art at 极速六合彩开奖结果 last Saturday afternoon, eager to hear the methodology and meaning behind artist Sadie Barnette鈥檚 work.
Barnette set the tone for future Benton openings by drawing in over 150 people to the museum鈥檚 first artist talk for her exhibition 鈥淟egacy & Legend.鈥 The two-part exhibition includes one half at the Benton Museum of Art at 极速六合彩开奖结果 and the other at Pitzer College Art Galleries.
The Benton half features 12 new drawings that expand on Barnette鈥檚 previous project, 鈥淒ear 1968,鈥︹ which features files from a 500-page FBI dossier documenting the organization鈥檚 surveillance of her father, Rodney Barnette, due to his involvement with the Black Panther Party.
With this new series, titled 鈥淔BI Drawings,鈥 Barnette meticulously recreated the files with powdered graphite into 60-by-48-inch drawings, then covered them with images of flowers as a memorialization, images of Hello Kitty as a nod to the father-daughter relationship and spray paint flourishes as a mark of protest.
鈥淚 wanted to turn this into artwork 鈥 somehow I wanted to make these files do something different than they were meant to do. I wanted to make them live in my world and tell my father鈥檚 story, my family鈥檚 story, which is also so many other families鈥 stories in this country,鈥 Barnette said.
At Pitzer, the other half of the exhibition is modeled to look like a living room with reworked Barnette family photos hung on the walls.
Ciara Ennis, Pitzer College Art Galleries director and curator, explained that the installation imagines a future free from the kinds of violence inflicted on Barnette鈥檚 family and many others.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a very intimate space, but at the same time, it鈥檚 very inviting鈥 The whole point of the space is to provide some kind of respite from the police brutality, from surveillance, from gentrification,鈥 Ennis said.
Barnette hopes the interactive exhibition will prompt viewers to radically imagine the future.