Chakaia Booker's "Shaved Portions" Opens in the Garment District

NEW YORK – April 18, 2024 – A 35-foot-tall abstract sculpture comprised of deconstructed rubber tires is towering above the Garment District as part of the Garment District Alliance’s latest public art exhibit, Shaved Portions, created by renowned sculptor, painter and photographer Chakaia Booker.

Located on the Broadway plazas in the Garment District between 39th and 40th Streets, Shaved Portions is composed of salvaged rubber tires and the resulting abstract form represents beauty, rhythm and a common humanity. The sculpture was originally commissioned for the Oklahoma Center for Contemporary Art and previously shown at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

“Shaved Portions is a powerful work which will mesmerize viewers with its form, texture and engineering as well as  urge them to contemplate the effect of waste and how it is interconnected with our common societal experience,” said Barbara A. Blair, president of the Garment District Alliance. “We are honored to feature Chakaia’s inspirational  work in the Garment District and encourage all to take in its splendor this spring.”

The sculpture – which is free for viewing and will be available to the public through November 1 – is part of Garment District Art on the Plazas, a year-round public art program made possible through Arterventions, a subpart of the New York City Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Art Program. The Garment District Alliance and DOT work closely to coordinate and install exhibits and individual pieces, which enhance public plazas and make them even more welcoming to New Yorkers.

Widely acclaimed for her artistic practice that pushes the limits of abstraction through utilizing repurposed materials, Booker transforms used and discarded rubber materials found on city streets, repair shops and dumps into elaborate sculptures. Through slicing, twisting and weaving tires into radically new forms and textures, Booker highlights and merges ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic disparity, globalization, and gender.  Booker’s work often evokes in viewers comparisons to the human experience,  where the varied tones of the rubber parallels human diversity, the tire treads drawing upon African scarification and textile design, and the visible wear and tear of the tires mirrors the physical marks of aging, and the unexplainable experiences of beauty and wonder.. Booker employs a variety of disciplines including African dance, ceramics, weaving, basketry, and tai’ chi to inform her approach to making artworks which in turn create a unique intellectual, physical and emotional experience of the work for each viewer.  

Chakaia Booker lives in New York City and works in New York and Allentown, Pennsylvania. Booker’s works are contained in more than 40 public collections and have been exhibited across the U.S., and in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. Recent public installation highlights include Millennium Park, Chicago (2016-2018); Garment District Alliance Broadway Plazas, New York (2014); and National Museum of Women in the Arts New York Avenue Sculpture Project, Washington DC (2012). Booker holds a Master of Fine Arts from the City College of New York and a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from Rutgers University.