Sculpting Tires

Chakaia Booker's latest exhibition Eradication: A Form of Obsession at the Newcomb Art Gallery on the Tulane University campus is the occasion to rediscover the artist, famous for her sculptures made with rubber tires. Following my first exposure to her work at the New Orleans Museum of Art, then an encounter at Art Basel Miami Beach and lately a daily walk by FOCI, an outdoor sculpture located on Poydras Street in New Orleans, I assumed that I knew the artist. After all, what else can be said in the monochrome medium? The conceptual artist's practice has been discussed, analyzed, interpreted and the metaphors about her work abound, alluding to forced labor, industrial revolution, racial differences, scarification,  consumerism, global economy, colonization, social disparities... The artist states her goal in the introduction to the exhibition: "...how broad, complex cultural transformations can continue to be expressed through common material".
At first sight, the visitor is drawn to a relief sculpture Color of Hope, 2010, a haptic landscape, harmonious construction made of rough material overtaken by curly pieces of rubber resulting in an organic composition, vision of generous opulence and growth surrounded by two intimate, smaller sized wall pieces Misleading Circumstances, 2005 and Masked Appeal, 2012.
The show includes also six sculptures in the round, and the visit becomes an aesthetically pleasing experience looking at Conversion, 2006, a strange animal built with pipes on one side and a rubbery, reptile-like material on  the other, Mixed Message, 2005, black ribbons flowing to the ground, like water out of a fountain, Wrench (Wench), 2001, an over-sized industrial tool featuring a boa feather for a handle or The Nest, 2003, evoking sexuality and birth with its feminine shapes. Privilege of Eating, 2012, goes straight to the point with two shovels representing the voracity of an opulent world  in contrast with the crumbled signs "private property", "no trespassing" embedded in the work, pieces of food carts, a broken door lock, symbols of a deprived world and its resulting marginalization.
The New Jersey hills in Booker's neighborhood are not made of white marble but piles of used tires which have become her medium since the 1990's, bringing analogy to speed, machinery and also pollution. Tearing, cutting, shredding, tugging, carving the tires, the artist's violent gesture to "deconstruct" is  followed by the act of conceptualization and creativity, transcending the material to "reconstruct". The sculptures offer a dialogue between feminine and masculine, roughness and smoothness, wealth and poverty... inviting deeper thoughts, addressing diverse issues with one medium she has transformed into a palette of colors and textures.
What makes the visit at the Newcomb gallery so compelling? The show offers a walk through almost two decades of the artist's practice in a space where the sculptures come alive under the soft natural light diffused through the ceiling and allows to discover the tactility and the depth of the work. An enlightening experience.

photographs by the author:

"Misleading Circumstances", 2005
Detail, "Mixed Messages", 2005
"Industrial Perpetousity", 2001

Wild, Chakaia Booker

Thanks to "Sculpture for New Orleans", my daily commute is  lined up  with sculptures along the Poydras corridor. Furthermore, I park right across FOCI, an outdoor work from Chakaia Booker.
I discovered the artist a few years ago at the New Orleans Museum of Art where one of her sculpture is included in the permanent collection.
Her medium, rubber tires, exude violence. The rubber produced by forced labor in African countries like Congo is a commodity traded daily and takes a historical, cultural and economic significance. The artist's gesture to create the sculpture transforms the medium into a powerful source of associations. Slashing, slicing, twisting the multi-shades black material, she gives birth to rebellious, lively, rough, exuberant, organic compositions and offers a reflection on colonization,  industrialization, consumerism, environmental concerns. Playing with smoothness and roughness, the reflection of the lights, her pieces transform rubber a rather masculine material into sensuous, haptic works like the piece at NOMA which could represent a headdress for a queen and/or a warrior. The references to her African-American heritage are not lost with the shades of black from the rubber and the scarification marks on the tires. The artist reaches far beyond the New Jersey shorelines where she found her inspiration in the dumps.


My next encounter was during Art Basel Miami Beach where one of her sculpture was displayed in the park surrounding the Bass Museum of Art.

What about the sculpture on Poydras? If the roughness of the material is still present with squares of rubber covering a metal skeleton like the abandoned carapace of a strange animal, the twisted sculpture appears contrived. The lifeless pole with a black tarp-like construction stretched on it, competes with a palm tree and melts in the bleary neighborhood, a no man's land filled with parking lots, the end of the corridor leading to the Interstate.


A sculpture for nowhere.

photographs by the author

sculpture at the NOMA
"FOCI" on Poydras