CHAKAIA BOOKER
PUBLIC WORK | Shaved Portions
On view through February 2025 | Garment District Alliance | 40th Street & Broadway
Blackburn Study Center | Works on Paper
April 18 - July 11, 2024 | Blackburn Study Center | 5th Floor | EFA Building
* in conjunction with her public artwork Shaved Portions, located at Broadway and 39th Street through November 1st
Though materially different than the sculptures made of rubber tires for which she’s known, Booker’s prints retain a visual link to her three-dimensional works. In her sculptural practice Booker often transforms the bulky tire into seemingly feather-light forms, imbuing the ubiquitous material with social and political implications. In her prints, Booker transforms the static nature of two-dimensional works into dense, patterned compositions almost buzzing with frenetic energy. In some, the gestural, abstract forms seem to burst forth from the geometric figures that are layered and stacked on the paper. In others, genderless figures composed of densely made patterns, float weightless in space yet ready to spring forth from the page. During her time at the Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Booker experimented with production processes, devising new ways to create work and make marks that draw from the visual language of her sculptural works. In the same way Booker forms sculptures out of unexpected materials, her prints are made with an innovative printing technique. Booker utilizes thin, delicate papers that become transparent during the printing process, allowing each layer to bleed into the next. She then tears and cuts these papers, combining them to make the final forms—an incredibly meticulous process. In the results of this incredible technique, Booker proves she can bend any medium to her will. - Hallie Ringle, ICA Philadelphia
Chakaia Booker | Public Artwork Shaved Portions with the support of The Garment District Alliance
Shaved Portions was among the most recent additions to Booker’s body of work marked by her distinct ability to radically transform her signature material — salvaged rubber tires — into an incredible array of biomorphic sculptures. To the artist, “It is about beauty, rhythm, and a common humanity. It is about how we create to connect with one another.”
The National Museum of Women in the Arts profiles her career-long practice, since the early 1990's as one that fuses “ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic differences, globalization, and gender by recycling discarded tires into complex assemblages. Booker slices, twists, weaves, and rivets this medium into radically new forms and textures, which easily withstand outdoor environments. For her, the varied tones of the rubber parallels human diversity, while the tire treads suggest images as varied as African scarification and textile designs."
Repurposed from cast-off industrial scraps that would otherwise have remained symbols of urban blight or measures of wanton waste, Shaved Portions was a monumental work standing sentinel atop Automobile Alley, which was originally lined with car dealerships.*
* https://oklahomacontemporary.org/exhibitions/prior/2021/chakaia-booker-shaved-portions
Photo by Leslie Jean-Bart
For group tours please email: rbpmw@efanyc.org, subject: Booker | Public Artwork.
Chakaia Booker (b. 1953) received a BA in sociology from Rutgers University and an MFA from the City College of New York. Her public art commissions include Millennium Park in Chicago; Garment District Alliance Broadway Plazas in New York; National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; and Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami. Her work is in more than 40 public collections and she has exhibited across the U.S., in Europe, Africa and Asia. She is the recipient of grants, fellowships and awards from numerous organizations, such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She lives in New York City and works in New York and Allentown, PA. She is represented by David Nolan Gallery.
* https://oklahomacontemporary.org/exhibitions/prior/2021/chakaia-booker-shaved-portions
Supported by The Garment District Alliance