Making a monumental weaving with discarded tires
Hailing from Newark, New Jersey, multimedia artist Chakaia Booker explores the urban landscape through refuse. Most widely known for her sculptures composed of discarded tires, Booker also practices printmaking and photography. In her work, old, worn, and used tires are transformed and given new life through the language of abstraction. Thick strips of rubber are formed into various shapes and patterns of different sizes and scales that emphasize the natural and manufactured texture of the rubber. In the Tower: Chakaia Booker: Treading New Ground is currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Larger-than-life reliefs are coupled with prints; the result immerses viewers in Booker’s work and conjures a revelatory experience. Each relief consumes the viewer and invites them into a continuous conversation. Booker’s more-than-forty-year practice presents an opportunity for ever-evolving exploration. It is an invitation to engage with our surroundings through multifaceted conversations, to embolden the imagination, and to enliven our connection to the visual arts and our world.
Women by Women, a series of interviews between women visual artists, is supported in part by the Deborah Buck Foundation with additional funding from the Judith Whitney Godwin Foundation.
Stephanie E. Goodalle The body of work presented in In the Tower: Chakaia Booker: Treading New Ground at the National Gallery of Art spans from the mid-1990s to 2010. What has your work revealed to you, and what have you learned about yourself through that time?
Chakaia Booker I don’t really look at my life or work in before and after terms. There is a perpetual motion in making abstract art. One thing leads to another, one foot in front of the other. If there is anything that has been learned, it is to keep moving forward. Working is revealing. I make the work, but in a way it isn’t totally mine. It becomes art when I share it and when it begins to belong to viewers as well—when it lives in their minds and piques their curiosity. Art is a shared experience, an instigator of conversations, a catalyst for change. A great work of art changes you, like orbiting planets passing one another, accelerating as they draw near to each other, slightly altering their trajectories as they part ways into space. I guess you could say I’ve learned that everything changes.
SEG Sculptural works in the show, including Acid Rain (2001), Echoes in Black (Industrial Cicatrization) (1996), and It’s So Hard to Be Green (2000), are incredibly large. How do you plan these projects and protect yourself during the creation process?
CB It’s not so much planning a piece as it is understanding the parameters. The tires provide me with a modular raw material. The material can grow exponentially, so I take advantage of that trait, and the pieces grow as I fill up the spaces I have to work with and the time I have to work within. Like any artist learning to use a new raw material, the material literacy you gain over a lifetime of working keeps you safe and going. Often my work begins with an idea or a gesture. I am looking for a rhythm and a flow. I have made large, monumental work since the beginning. When art takes on a scale far greater than our own bodies, it changes our relationship to it; we think of things greater than ourselves, and our relationship to the work and the world around us changes.
“I see my work as part of our culture rather than a reflection or byproduct of it. I make work to be experienced.”
SEG Describe the importance and utilization of weaving and the influence of material culture in your practice.
CB I use a wide variety of construction techniques to create different patterns, textures, and movements that a particular piece demands. A feeling of weaving is just one of many tools I use. I see my work as part of our culture rather than a reflection or byproduct of it. I make work to be experienced. What each viewer brings to the work becomes a part of it for them personally. In this way my experience and the viewers’ are woven together, separate threads of a single fabric. The construction methods are less important than the overall experience. A woven basket has purpose, a utility, yet it can still be beautiful while transporting beloved or necessary items. An empty basket can also be full of potential. We learn to build as much to protect and share what we cherish.
SEG Why use tires as a medium?
CB In the beginning tires were available in abundance, and they could be manipulated to create modular parts, allowing the scale of my work to increase and providing me with an ability to exhibit indoors as well as outside. As I came to understand the nature of the tires as a raw material like wood, stone, or clay, the possibilities became limitless. The only thing that holds back a raw material is imagination. The tires have held my curiosity and piqued my imagination for nearly forty years, and I don’t see any sign of that waning. I use tires just as I use fabric or paper because I have found my way to communicate clearly through the materials.
SEG Rubber is a durable and stretchy material. Over time, it changes color and eventually rots. How do these natural transformations impact the creation process and longevity of the work?
CB When I end up with a tire, it begins a new life. I manipulate it, reform it, and decide the final shape it takes. Every artist chooses their materials because of the feedback it provides for the creative process, the tactility, the visual effect, and in my case as a sculptor the space it can occupy alongside a viewer.
SEG Foundling Warrior Quest (II 21C) (2010) depicts you in a six-part, black-and-white photogravure series among a salvage jungle. Why document yourself in the landscape?
CB It gives the viewer the opportunity to see what I’ve seen and to be a part of the experience.
SEG In addition to sculpture, you also utilize various printmaking techniques, including photogravure and chine collé. What freedom and limitation, if any, do these mediums provide?
CB I approach printmaking like I approach sculpture. They have a similar mindset and construction method. I cut, reform, and combine paper and fabric much like I do rubber. There is repetition in printmaking that is familiar to me creatively. In the case of printmaking, I am generating the patterns, and the color palette is far more extensive. Printmaking offers me another way to communicate visually. It helps me express another perspective. I see printmaking as freeing up ideas that I have had for quite some time. I don’t really see a limitation with printmaking; like with any media, once you find your way of using it, the possibilities are only limited by imagination. I recently completed some new print works combining paper and fabric in a way that allows me to scale up in a modular way. There is always forward movement regardless of the process.
In the Tower: Chakaia Booker: Treading New Ground is on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, until August 3, 2026.
