Used rubber tires and industrial materials transform into soft curves and flowing lines in Chakaia Booker’s The Fatality of Hope, giving the unforgiving medium featherlight form.
To create the powerful but elegant work, Booker utilizes weaving — a historically feminine pursuit — along with traditionally masculine materials and tools.
Its physical presence mirrors its process, twisting and cutting.
A student of various disciplines — including basketry, ceramics, African dance, and Tai chi — Booker began working with discarded tires in large, outdoor sculptures in the 1990s.
The tire thread, which the artist describes as “abstractly African,” speaks to Booker’s concerns of ecology as well as gender, race, and economy.
These same pursuits can be seen within the accompanying chine collé prints.
How does Booker use line, texture, and movement to echo the energy of the sculpture?
Chine collé allows the artist to print onto thin, delicate surfaces, which exhibit finer detail and tone than papers or textiles traditionally allowed.
Booker has mastered this technique over the last fourteen years at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop working alongside Master Printmakers Phil Sanders and Justin Sanz.
Master Printmaker Robert Blackburn himself demonstrated this and other printmaking techniques at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts’ Art School in 1985.
“Making prints for me is no different in approach than making sculpture,” says Booker. “I respond to materials, rhythms, shapes, concepts and build from that based on what's at hand.”
And it is through chine collé that Booker has woven the industrial tread of her commanding sculpture work into a delicate form.
