Sadie Barnette works in photography, drawing, collage, or large-scale installations, and turns her attention toward unexpected locations of identity construction, family histories, celebration, and excess. She creates visual compositions that engage a hybrid aesthetic of minimalism and density, using text, glitter, and found objects to demonstrate the necessity for poetry and abstraction in urban life and the power of the personal as political.

Barnette is featured in an exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California (2016). She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Hermitage, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and at the Vermont Studio Center. Barnette participated in: Young, Gifted and Black, curated by Hank Willis Thomas at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa; Everything, Everyday, the Artist in Residence exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, USA; Incognito (2015), Santa Monica Museum of Art, California, USA; and Fore, at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, USA.