Archive Acts: Sadie Barnette, The New Eagle Creek Saloon at ICA LA
by Essence Harden
“The New Eagle Creek Saloon” (2019) is the latest work of multi-disciplinary artist Sadie Barnette. Originally exhibited at the San Francisco experimental art institution The Lab in May of 2019, “The New Eagle Creek Saloon” has arrived at the ICA LA for the fall season. Barnette’s New Eagle Creek is an homage to her father Rodney Barnette’s bar, The Eagle Creek Saloon, the first (perhaps the last) black-owned gay bar in San Francisco. Open from 1990–1993, the original Eagle Creek was a refute of the anti-black practices of predominantly white-owned queer establishment on the foggy side of the bay. Met with demands for three forms of identification, dress codes, and stopping music when black patrons danced closely together, the ’90s queer bar scene in San Francisco mirrored the white supremacist practices throughout the states; black music yes, black people no. When the senior Barnette was propositioned to purchase the bar he tended at Barnette quickly said yes, spending months revamping the Market street dive into a place of shine and luster. The original Eagle Creek Saloon was decidedly for black queer refuge, community formation, activism, and those who found themselves in need of a home. Or as the senior Barnette put it at a recent talk at ICA LA, The Eagle Creek Saloon could be thought of as a community center which served alcohol.
With “The New Eagle Creek Saloon,” Sadie Barnette has utilized the ethos and lure of the original bar in the construction of her radiant stele. Constructed as a monument to what was, Barnette’s installation is welded from the sentiments and narratives of those who found sanctuary in the walls of the original Eagle Creek. Noting the limited physical documentation and the little known history of her father’s establishment, Barnette’s project is one which calls forth the archive of yesterday while offering the artifacts to map what will become the historical. In a rapidly changing Bay Area which has long exercised black erasure (cultural, political, and in its populations) Barnette’s work refuses the seemingly inevitable through the creation of a gleaming, living, edifice.
“The New Eagle Creek Saloon,” between iterations at ICA LA and The Lab San Francisco, has offered a series of programming, parties, and events which have enabled former attendees to participate and offer personal archival material in the form of photographs and oral histories. Both opening celebrations, birthday parties (both Barnette’s share the same birthday), and the bar’s inclusion in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade have been filled with flowing drinks, house music, panels, call and response, and queer community making. Barnette has extended these ephemeral acts towards more formal captures via her zine A Tribute to the “New Eagle Creek Saloon,” (2019) and with the acquisition of the mirrors from the original Eagle Creek Saloon held in the archive of Oakland based artist Brontez Purnell which are now part of the ICA LA iteration. Barnette has stated this work as “honoring of [queer] lineage as artistic gesture” and The New Eagle Creek is nothing less than a grand gesture to the notion that both art and the history are experimental sites for futurity.
And what of the installation itself? Barnette’s signature shine of glitter and pink imamate throughout the ICA Project Room, bouncing off the curved metal of the bar, its stools, and shelves. Collage works and covered books line the bars ledges shimmering among framed images of the original Eagle Creek Saloon regulars. Across from the bar, Barnette’s holographic couches create additional moments of rest or chatter for those who exceed the bar seating. Three irregularly shaped mirrors — those sourced from the original Eagle Creek Saloon — line the walls behind the glittering sofas, their borders made a deep glinting hue nearing magenta. The bar stuns as is — a mammoth testament to the efforts and radical visions of her father and his community — but throughout its run at ICA (aligned with specific programs) becomes galvanized as an operational space serving drinks, music, and raucous social space. The New Eagle Creek Saloon is not merely an act of archiving what was but is an active space that envisions the historical as something to be assessed and held in the present. Barnette’s offering lets us know we have arrived home and that home, at least in the ethos of Eagle Creek Saloon both old and made anew, is” a friendly place, with a funky bass, for every race.”
“The New Eagle Creek Saloon,” runs until January 26, 2020.
Essence Harden is an independent curator, arts writer, and Ph.D. candidate living and working in Los Angeles. Find them here: @ essenceh and essenceharden.com
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