Chakaia Booker (born 1953) is an American sculptor known for creating monumental, abstract works for both the gallery and outdoor public spaces. Booker’s works are contained in more than 40 public collections and have been exhibited across the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Art in 2001. Booker has lived and worked in New York City’s East Village since the early 1980s and maintains a production studio in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Booker is best known for her innovative and signature use of recycled rubber tires, her primary sculptural material. Rubber has provided Booker with the ability to work in a modular format at a monumental scale while maintaining a fluid movement and gestural feel. Throughout her career, Booker has consistently used stainless steel and fabric to create sculptural works in addition to rubber tires.
In 2009, Booker began an in depth exploration of printmaking creating a significant body of graphic works, largely focused on the process of chine collé. Booker’s approach to printmaking processes is reminiscent of her modular working methods in sculpture. Printmaking has become a regular part of Booker’s artistic output, and as with her use of rubber, Booker has invented unique ways of manipulating materials and processes.
Early life and education
Booker was born in 1953 in Newark, New Jersey and raised in neighboring East Orange, New Jersey. She learned to sew from her grandmother, aunt, and sister. Fixing, repairing, and manipulating materials early in life was foundational to Booker’s later approach to wearable art, ceramics, and sculpture, specifically with the use of pattern, repetition, and modular construction.
She has lived and worked in New York City’s East Village since the early 1980s. In the 1990s, she began working with discarded construction materials and rubber tires, which evolved into her artistic style. She maintains a production studio in Allentown, Pennsylvania for fabrication of large-scale and public works. Booker has served on the boards of the International Sculpture Center and Socrates Sculpture Park.
Beginning in the 1980s, Booker created wearable sculptures which she could place herself inside and utilize as clothing. "The wearable garment sculpture was about getting energy and feeling from a desired design."[2] In the early 1990s, Booker began to create large outdoor sculptures from discarded materials found at construction sites, including rubber tires, a medium in which she continues to work. The various tire tread patterns, colors, and widths create a palette for Booker similar to the palette of a painter. Booker's use of tires suggests a range of aesthetic, political, cultural, and economic concerns. They may be considered a reference to the urban landscape of Northern New Jersey[1] or a reminder how modes of transportation have changed since the industrial age.[3] The tire sculptures may also be considered to address African American identity: their varying pigments and textures can be interpreted as a representation of the range of African American skin tones,[4] and their resiliency has been viewed as "a compelling metaphor of African American survival in the modern world."[5] Tire tread patterns in her work may also refer to elements of African culture, including scarification, body painting, and traditional textiles.[6]
Booker's work also deals with themes of class, labor, sustainability, and gender. Booker's "Echoes in Black (Industrial Cicatrization)" from the 2000 Whitney Biennial deals with the emotional and physical scarification that people experience in life. Her piece "No More Milk and Cookies" from 2003 "questions our commercially driven society and what happens when consumption is prohibited."[7] In "The Urgency and Resonance of Chakaia Booker," “For example, the piece “It’s So Hard To Be Green” (2000), [composed] of rubber and wood, has a riot of textures and tendrils, knots and curls,” raises value to what can be implied as how hard sustainability is to maintain.[8] Similarly, her piece “Wonder” is one of many pieces that work to represent sustainability in which speaks to the environment and ecology importance and intention Booker showcases to her audience, from "Artist Chakaia Booker Gives Tires a Powerful Retread."[9] Booker didn't stop at only recycling tires from her hometown and what she could find but also began sourcing them straight out of businesses that had no use for used old tires, this includes “Michelin, which sends her used tires from race cars and motorcycles” as mentioned in "For Chakaia Booker, Whose Medium Is Tires, the Art Is in the Journey."[10] Aruna D’Souza, on "How Artist Chakaia Booker Turns Car Tires into Transcendence," does a good job illustrating the connection between recycled tires that were then used to create Booker's installations. Unsurprisingly, tires also relate to back-bending automobile labor and come full circle regarding how unsustainable tires become after use.[11] For example, Booker's 2001 piece "Wench (Wrench) III" is a surrealistic sculpture that subverts a very masculinemechanic's wrench into a femininefeather boa. The piece "Spirit Hunter" is reminiscent of images of life and death, as well as a feminist approach to birth and sexuality.[12]
On June 22, 2008, Booker unveiled "Chaikaia Booker: Mass Transit" in Indianapolis, Indiana. This public art exhibition featured 10 sculptures "created by the artist following her visit to Indianapolis and her researching of the city's history and heritage."[13]
The National Museum of Women in the Arts has exhibited her works in The New York Avenue Sculpture Project (2012), FOREFRONT: Chakaia Booker (2006), and Reaching for the Stars through Art (1998).[14] The Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA also exhibited her work in an exhibition entitled Defiant Beauty, which was on display from April 2012 – 2013.[15] Several of her works were also on display in New York City's Garment District from June–November 2014 and 2024.[16][17]
Arango, Jorge. "Elevating the Everyday: Sculpture Chakaia Booker". Essence November 2003, 146
Castro, John Gardener "The Language of Life: Chakaia Booker". Sculpture (Washington D.C.) January/February 2003, 28-33
"Chakaia Booker", 2007, Decordova Sculpture Park Online, 2007, (21 March 2007)
"Chakaia Booker", 2007 Marlborough Gallery Online, 2007 (21 March 2007)
Glueck, Grace; "Art InReview; Chakaia Booker," The New York Times, 16 March 2001,
Lewis, Samella S.; African American Art and Artists. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990
Nichols, Mathew Guy; "Chakaia Booker:Material Matters", Art In America, June/July 2004, 164-169
Sanders, Phil and David Krut Projects (Gallery). Chakaia Booker: Print Me. New York: David Krut Publishing. 2012
Wei, Lilly; "Queen of Rubber Soul", Art News, January 2002, 88-90
Wilkinson, Michelle; Material girls : contemporary Black women artists: Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, 2011, 18-19
