Chakaia Booker

Born in Newark, 1953. Lives and works in New York.

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Chakaia Booker is an internationally renowned multidisciplinary abstract artist best known for pioneering the use of recycled rubber tires as a raw material for monumental sculptural works. A fixture of the New York City East Village art scene since the early 1980’s, Booker has exhibited across the US, in Europe, Africa, and Asia with works included in more than 30 museum collections. Booker’s signature style stems from a modular approach to building an artwork through layering regardless of media or scale. Primarily a sculptor, Booker works with rubber, bronze, and ceramics alongside a dedicated practice in painting and printmaking. Accolades include the 2000 Whitney Biennial, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and inclusion in the seminal exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera, which placed the artist rightfully in the company of influential and uniquely identifiable abstractionists - Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Ellsworth Kelly, Helen Frankenthaler, Thornton Dial, Louise Nevelson, and Cy Twombly.