Right now, in Manhattan’s Garment District, a towering 35-foot black sculpture rises and falls in a spindling honeycomb net of rubber and steel across a plaza on Broadway. The sculpture, titled Shaved Portions, is the creation of American artist Chakaia Booker.
Chakaia Booker, Shaved Portions (2024). Courtesy of David Nolan Gallery. Photograph by Alexandre Ayer.
The work is on view on Broadway between 39th and 40th Streets until November as part of a recurring public sculpture initiative organized by the Garment District Alliance. Since the 1980s, Booker has worked with salvaged rubber tires, transforming this industrial detritus into powerful abstract visions that engage questions of beauty, movement, race, and mobility.
“Chakaia Booker has been a powerhouse since the 1980s even against the backdrop of the household heroes of sculpture, like Richard Serra, John Chamberlain, and Jeff Koons, who were challenging what sculpture could be. Booker’s decision to use discarded black rubber tires was ahead of its time,” said David Nolan, her representing dealer, “As a woman and a Black artist with strong political underpinnings, the freedom of expression and the movement she imbued in these powerful sculptures would take many years to be accepted as a pioneer of recycled rubber, often at a monumental scale.”
Chakaia Booker, Shaved Portions (2024). Courtesy of David Nolan Gallery. Photograph by Alexandre Ayer. Photograph by Alexandre Ayer.
Originally commissioned by the Oklahoma Center for Contemporary Art, Shaved Portions has previously been shown at Washington University in St. Louis. For Booker, who maintains studios in New York and Pennsylvania, this newest installation in the city’s historic textile manufacturing center adds new dimensions to its meaning. The Garment District has a complex history shaped by textile manufacturing’s deep ties to slave labor. At the same time, the neighborhood was home to the first Jazz club and Black-owned hotel, The Marshall, during the 1870s. In this context, the work hints at the interconnectedness of all people and celebrates our shared humanity.
Stretching some 75 feet wide, the sculpture is also an undeniable testament to individual craft; the sculpture is made by Booker herself, rather than, as many assume, a fabricator. As with many of her most iconic works, Shaved Portions consists of discarded rubber tires sourced from dumps, repair shops, and city streets, and assembled which she transforms through intensely physical processes rooted in African dance, weaving, and tai-chi.
This November, David Nolan Gallery will present an exhibition of Booker’s works, coinciding with the installation, which will elaborate on her contributions to contemporary art. “She is having a new renaissance of serious museum and collector interest these days,” added Nolan. “Many museums are trying to catch up and realizing her importance and influence.”
Coinciding with her New York installation, we caught up with Booker who offered us a glimpse into her studio practice.
You recently debuted your massive sculpture, Shaved Portions, in New York’s
Garment District. What was the process for making a sculpture that size like?
How did the location change the meaning of the sculpture and what has it been like to see it on view?
Shaved Portions was originally commissioned by the Oklahoma Contemporary Art Center and the space it was installed in was very different to Broadway in New York City. It has been great to show the work in my hometown of New York, where the repetition and modularity take on a different feeling when surrounded by the buildings with their repeated windows, doors, sidewalks, lighting fixtures, and all the people and cars passing by.
It feels different. You see different things depending on where it is installed and your vantage point. I like that about the work. As an abstract artist, the environment and experience are really everything for the viewer. I’m lucky in that I get to experience the work in many different ways.
Detail of Chakaia Booker’s Shaved Portions (2024). Courtesy of David Nolan Gallery. Photograph by Alexandre Ayer.
How did you start working with salvaged tires? What appealed to you
about the material?
I started working with found materials and tires in the early 1980s. It was a readily available material, discarded on the streets, on burned-out cars, the East Village was a very different place in those days. I gravitated to rubber tires because of their durability, malleability, and capacity for shaping into forms that could be used in a modular way.
It was modularity that allowed me to increase my scale to what you see with Shaved Portions on Broadway. I’ve stuck with rubber tires all these years because to me it is a raw material like wood, metal, or clay. It has endless possibilities.
Chakaia Booker in her studio. Photograph by Stephen Allen.
Tell us about your studio. How does it compare to other studios you’ve
had? Where is it and what kind of space is it, etc.?
I have three spaces that I work out of. There is my space in the East Village, where I have been since the ’80s. I have a much larger space, capable of making monumental public works in Allentown, PA, and I work on prints at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop on 39th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. Each of these three environments is unique and offers me different creative possibilities. My New York City studio is more intimate as compared to the larger space in Allentown where I have forklifts and pallets of tires. The print workshop is different as there are always people coming and going. The energy is very different in these spaces. Each adds to the work in their own way.
Chakaia Booker, Conflicting Issues (2023). Courtesy of David Nolan Gallery. Copyright of the artist.
When you feel stuck while preparing for a show, what do you do to get
unstuck?
People often ask artists about getting stuck, or creative blocks. I don’t have an answer to that. I’m always working. Always moving forward. There is always the next thing, and you just keep pushing. Stopping or getting stuck isn’t an option. I tell artists the key is to keep moving, keep working. Stopping is when you could get stuck.
What tool or art supply do you enjoy working with the most, and why? Or is there anything in your studio that a visitor might find surprising?
The thing people find most surprising in my studio is the one or two assistants helping to create the work. They assume that since some of my work is monumental, and obviously labor intensive I must have a dozen people working for me.