WASHINGTON, DC.- For over four decades, Chakaia Booker (b. 1953) has cut, coiled, and contorted used tires, transforming this industrial waste into abstract sculpture. Gravitating toward found, weathered tires, she highlights the histories of their production, use, and disposal by incorporating their stains, cracks, and fading to create a range of tones and textures in her work. As Booker finds beauty in refuse, her reclamation of discarded objects offers a fresh perspective not only on her materials but also on humanity’s relationship with and responsibility to the environment. In the Tower: Chakaia Booker: Treading New Ground is the artist’s first solo showcase in Washington, DC, in a decade. This exhibition will explore her artistic practice as part of the National Gallery’s In the Tower series, which presents the work of leading contemporary artists in Tower 3 of the East Building. The exhibition is on view from April 5 to August 3, 2025.
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“In the art world, tires are synonymous with Chakaia Booker. She is a pioneering artist who has developed an unparalleled practice, exploring the form, texture, and materiality of her signature medium with remarkable ingenuity. Booker’s transformative works speak to such enduring and critical themes as the impact of humanity on our planet. The National Gallery is excited to highlight this important concern that has driven much of Booker’s creation of powerful sculptures since the 1990s,” said Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic art at the National Gallery.
Booker’s sculptures aim to convey a sense of the realities from which the materials emerged while also presenting new possibilities for their use and interpretation. In the context of global natural disasters, ecological advocacy, and humankind’s reckoning with the effects of climate change, Booker projects a new vision for the world through her art.
Treading New Ground presents three monumental wall relief sculptures: Acid Rain (2001), It’s So Hard to Be Green (2000), and Echoes in Black (Industrial Cicatrization) (1996). Measuring 20–21 feet wide each, the sculptures feature spiky shards, coiled strips, and looped bands of rubber. Their titles, materials, and processes of creation directly and indirectly reference the social, natural, economic, and emotional conditions of environmentalists’ concerns; Booker’s practice of salvage and reuse itself reduces waste and prevents the disposal of tires in landfills, where they emit methane gas into the atmosphere. Installed on each of the long walls in the Tower gallery, the exhibition offers a setting in which visitors can contemplate Booker’s extraordinary transformation of discarded materials and the implications of her constructions.
The exhibition also features a six-part photogravure series, Foundling Warrior Quest (II 21C) (2010), which further illuminates Booker’s long-standing commitment to environmentalism. Dramatizing the process of scavenging tires and other materials, the images depict the artist as a mythical being foraging in a harsh, industrial landscape. The black-and-white imagery conjures up a distant past as much as it alludes to a future environment stricken by the effects of a climate in crisis.
The exhibition is curated by Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic art, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
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