California Bicentennial Medal

SHARON BARNES is an inter-disciplinary Los Angeles-based artist who uses process and materials to create meaning. Through the medium of Social Abstraction and the poetics of materiality, her work explores an expanse of visual languages as it navigates the blur between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. Barnes is interested in the potential of objects to speak about the human condition. Her works create metaphors of fracture and reparation, displacement and reposition, layer and overlap, informed by the Black experience and critical discourse.

Barnes was born in Sacramento, CA, and raised in Los Angeles. She studied at Otis College of Art & Design where she recently returned to complete her MFA. She earned her B.A. in Television-Film at CSULA. Barnes has exhibited in galleries, universities, museums and art fairs, including group shows at the California African American Museum, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Aqua Art Miami, the Los Angeles Tom Bradley Airport and a site installation at the Arco Chato in the Republic of Panama. She has completed residencies at the Ox-Bow School of Art & Artist Residency (an affiliate of the Art Institute of Chicago) in Saugatuck, MI and the Spelman College Art Colony at Taller Portobelo in Panama. Barnes’ work is part of the permanent collection of the UCLA Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies as well as municipal and business collections.

Visit the artist’s website: https://sharonlouisebarnes.com/