Barnette’s father, Rodney Barnette, was a founding member of the Compton chapter of the Black Panther Party, resulting in surveillance by the FBI. In 2016, Barnette gained access to the five-hundred-page FBI file on her father through the Freedom of Information Act. Documents in the file included interviews with Rodney Barnette’s employers, childhood neighbors, and high school teachers, as well as a detailed family tree including names, birthdays, and military awards. She continues to use the file within her work, often redacting and reworking these materials and adding glitter and the colors pink and black.

Barnette was a 2014–15 Studio Museum in Harlem artist in residence. In 2022, the Studio Museum collaborated with The Kitchen, New York City, to present Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Salon. The Studio Museum has presented her work in the group exhibitions Excerpt (2017); Everything, Everyday (2015); and Fore (2013). She has had solo exhibitions at Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, Claremont, California(2021); Pitzer College Art Galleries, Pitzer College, Claremont, California (2021); Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2019); Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2019); and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco (2016). She obtained an MFA from the University of California, San Diego and a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Barnette first entered the Studio Museum collection in 2015.