Artist: Chakaia Booker
Artist Bio:
Sculptor Chakaia Booker fuses ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic difference, globalization, and gender by recycling discarded tires into complex assemblages. Booker began to integrate discarded construction materials into large, outdoor sculptures in the early 1990s. Tires resonate with her for their versatility and rich range of historical and cultural associations. Booker slices, twists, weaves, and rivets this medium into radically new forms and textures, which easily withstand outdoor environments.
Booker received a B.A. in sociology from Rutgers University in 1976, and an M.F.A. from the City College of New York in 1993. She gained international acclaim at the 2000 Whitney Biennial with It’s So Hard to Be Green (2000), her 12.5 x 21 foot wall-hung tire sculpture. Booker received the Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2002 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. She has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Booker's work was the subject of a retrospective at the Jersey City Museum, NJ and an expansive solo exhibition at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, both in 2004. Notable group exhibitions include shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Corcoran Biennial, Washington, DC. A past winner of a Pollock-Krasner Award, Booker was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 2005. In 2006, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, opened an important solo exhibition of Booker's work. Recent outdoor solo exhibitions of the artist's work were held at The Sculpture Park at Moore in Aviator Park, Moore College of Art, Chicago, Illinois, and at the Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey.
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