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Chakaia Booker
Visual Impressions I, 2002
Rives BFK paper & modified dark brown etching ink
44 x 30 inches
Internationally acclaimed artist, Chakaia Booker creates powerful sculptures and works on paper from discarded truck, car and bicycle tires. She employs these forms to comment on themes ranging from black identity to urban ecology. The hardiness and adaptability
of the tires represent, according to Booker, "the survival of the Africans in the diaspora." In the black color of the tires she sees African skin, and the patterned treads represent tribal designs. Booker draws upon Louise Nevelson's constructions
of found objects, Romare Bearden's energetic collages, and Jacob Lawrence's manipulation of color and composition to form her own vigorous sculptures.
Booker received a BA in sociology from Rutgers University in 1976 and a MFA 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), a 12.5 x 21’ 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.