Feelings, Recursive (2022)
Sadie Barnette
Feelings is a large-scale work installed at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center at W San Carlos St & S Market St. The piece expands upon Barnette's drawing practice: part of her ongoing Text Compositions series, the work was first executed by hand in powdered graphite, repeating the word "feelings" over and over to compress an enormous emotional weight into a single, elegant gesture. That intimate studio process now scales to 22 feet wide by 18 feet high on the Convention Center façade, internally illuminated with color kinetic lighting to ensure visibility for both car and pedestrian traffic throughout the day and evening.
Feelings, Recursive, 2022, Powdered graphite, Paper size: 60 x 48 inches / 152.4 x 121.9 cm, Framed: 61 1/8 x 49 1/8 x 2 inches / 155.3 x 124.8 x 5.1 cm, Photo: Phillip Maisel. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman.
Artist photo: Smeeta Mahant. Courtesy of the artist
150 W San Carlos St, San Jose, CA 95113
About the artist
Sadie Barnette (b. 1984, Oakland, CA) has a BFA from CalArts and an MFA from University of California, San Diego. Barnette has enjoyed solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; SFMOMA, CA; San José Museum of Art; The Kitchen, New York; Pomona College, Los Angeles and Pitzer College Art Galleries, Los Angeles; ICA Los Angeles; The Lab, San Francisco; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, PA; and Manetti Shrem Museum, UC Davis. Barnette's forthcoming solo exhibition at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE, opens in August 2026. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Creative Capital Award, United States Artists Fellowship, Paulson Fontaine Press residency, Studio Museum in Harlem residency, Artadia Award, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency, and the inaugural Artist Fellow at UC Berkeley's Black Studies Collaboratory, among others. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; LACMA, CA; de Young, San Francisco, CA; Brooklyn Museum; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Guggenheim Museum, NY; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Blanton Museum at UT Austin, TX; San José Museum of Art, CA; Oakland Museum of California; Berkeley Art Museum; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others. Recent commissions include Bay Area Walls at SFMOMA, a large-scale photomural at California African American Museum on view through October 2027, and a permanent, site-specific installation at the Los Angeles International Airport that is forthcoming in 2027. Barnette's third solo exhibition with Jessica Silverman will take place in September 2026. Barnette lives and works in Oakland, CA. She is represented by Jessica Silverman.