Sadie Barnette, Room to Live, 2019. Photo by Mark Woods.
Courtesy of the artist and the Henry Art Gallery.
In 2020, Emily Zimmerman caught up with artist Sadie Barnette to discuss her installation Room to Live, which was on view at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. In the BOMB magazine interview, Barnette reveals that the installation derives from a 500-page surveillance file amassed on her father during his involvement with the Panther Party and the exoneration of Angela Davis. With Room to Live, Barnett wanted to create a visual type of "counter-surveillance" to unmask the process of seeing and being seen as slow labor toward liberation.
“I’m not dreaming of a new president or a new director of the FBI; I’m dreaming of something so fundamentally different that it is still a dream." - Sadie Barnette
