WASHINGTON, D.C.- The National Museum of Women in the Arts presents the exhibit Forefront: Chakaia Booker through September 4, 2006. In this large one-gallery installation, Chakaia Booker continues her sculptural exploration of the African American experience, feminism, and the work ethic in America. In her a “post-industrial” objects made from automobile tires, Booker develops her own version of environmental consciousness and rehabilitation.

At the same time, her works comment upon the industrial machine and what it makes of men and women and their relationships—“the ensuing conditions of unmet needs and desires,” as she calls it. Ultimately, her sculptures are barb-tongued images in which formal innovations dovetail with force exercised and force absorbed.

A native of New York, Chakaia Booker received her BA in sociology from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey and went on to earn a Masters in Fine Arts from the City College of New York. Chakaia is well-known for her use of rubber tires as a medium for her art, which has been highly acclaimed by critics and the public. Her work is achieved through recycling old tires that have been thrown away, and it is symbolic of the survival of Africans in the diaspora. She has had solo and group exhibitions all over the US and Japan.