ADAA - The Art Show 2023
David Nolan Gallery
Booth C1

A staple of the 1980s East Village art scene perhaps best known for her pioneering use of recycled rubber tires as a raw material for making often-monumental abstract sculpture, Chakaia Booker (b. 1953) will debut her first-ever textile art at ADAA this year, inspired by an evolution of her paper collage practice.

To further convey the artist’s unique process, the exhibition will also feature distinct veins of media that Booker has adopted in her practice over time—paper collages and rubber-tire sculptures—the latter of which the artist has developed over four decades, and the former of which informs the new textile work. The paper collages offer visual parallels with the sculptures’ tire tread patterns and overall shapes.

Her sculptural works, made from black rubber tires, evoke political and social aspects, including the patterns of the tires alluding to African scarification; the exploitation tied to the collection of rubber; and the history of low wages African American workers received in the automobile industry. Booker’s work looks back to the social upheaval of the 1960s and the awakening of American society to the continuing plight of Black Americans.

In terms of her process, Booker has revolutionized the way drawings and prints are made when using the chine collé technique. She reinvented this process to serve her own creative desires to increase the number and transparency of layers, allowing marks, colors, and materials to blend into one another. Booker often activates the surface of her works on paper through embossment, a direct visual foil to black rubber tire treads.

More information is in the above-linked catalog, and a preview of works on view is below. Image files with credit lines are in the above-linked Dropbox folder.