Location: Oakland, CA
Medium: Painting, Film, Photography
Website: devynn.design
Devynn Barnes is a self-taught painter and visual artist based in Oakland, California. Barnes came to painting through earlier work in film and photography, and that background continues to shape a practice that moves between the canvas, the camera and the moving image.
Barnes has shown widely in Bay Area galleries and community spaces since the early 2020s. In early 2024 they presented the solo exhibition Renaissance of Reclamation at Schlomer Haus Gallery in San Francisco. That spring they were one of four Bay Area artists in Mane 'n Tail, curated by Charles Lee at Casemore Gallery. Their work has also appeared in Queer Kicks, a group exhibition curated by Schlomer Haus Gallery at ComplexCon 2023 in Long Beach, and in group shows in Oakland, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Seattle, Los Angeles and London. Barnes has spoken on panels including MoAD x Oakland Public Library: Black Cowboys, Black Art (2024).
Barnes describes the work as cinematic and multi-dimensional, blending documentation with artistic expression. Their paintings, films and photographs focus on Black and brown bodies and on histories that are not widely taught, particularly the history of Black cowboys, or “Cowfolk.” Renaissance of Reclamation was presented as “a curation of immortalized moments of black and brown bodies.”
The work asks viewers to confront their own narratives. Barnes frames this as an invitation to collective awakening and communal homecoming, aiming to restore figures who have been left out of the familiar image of the American West.
This entry was written by the Bay Area Artist Wiki project and is based on publicly available information.
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