Foci
Chakaia Booker
2010
MATERIAL: stainless steel
DIMENSIONS: H. 30 x 8 x 8 feet
CREDIT: Courtesy of the Artist
© Artist or Artist's Estate
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Booker started working with tires in the 1980s, salvaging them from the streets of New York City. “It was a readily available material, discarded on the streets, on burned-out cars, the East Village was a very different place in those days. I gravitated to rubber tires because of their durability, malleability, and capacity for shaping into forms that could be used in a modular way.” With this material Booker is able to work in numerous ways, treating the rubber as a canvas that can be cut, shredded, folded, pieced together, and wrapped around an armature, as in the example of Foci on loan to Grounds For Sculpture. “I’ve stuck with rubber tires all these years because to me it is a raw material like wood, metal, or clay. It has endless possibilities.” Standing at 30 feet tall, Foci was commissioned in 2010 by Storm King to celebrate their 50th anniversary. In this work, Booker started with a stainless steel armature which provides a structural skeleton for the overlapping pieces of tires that are wrapped around the steel.
Booker is also conscious of the social and environmental impact of her chosen material. Comparing this work to another work currently on loan (in the Slow Motion exhibition), Future Futures by Billy Dufala, both artists are keenly aware of the environmental impact that their selected material has on our planet. For Dufala, he is highlighting the commodity market and capitalizing on the twin values of intrinsic material valuation and creating a fine art object, which will upon deinstallation, allow him to fund future projects through selling this raw material back to the recycling center. For Booker, she is providing a creative use for a material that will otherwise be piled up in landfills.
Additionally, Booker is aware of the role that Black labor has played in the development of the tire industry and the development of the middle class. In the early 1900s, industrialization contributed to fast growth in many cities, particularly in the “Rust Belt”, where ramped up industrial production in cities such as Akron, OH put America on wheels, manufacturing most of the country’s tires and earning the title “Rubber Capital of the World”. The labor force required to support this growth was of necessity recruited from other parts of the country. African Americans left the deep South in response to political, social, and economic hardship, heading north in search of better opportunity and to escape the violence and racism of the Jim Crow south, first during the World Wars, and then in greater numbers during the Great Migration. African Americans were not only providing manual labor in tire factories, but they were also employed as engineers and chemists. Ray Dove was the first African American chemist to work in the tire industry. A WWII veteran with three bronze stars and a master’s degree, Dove was only able to secure that position after six years as an elevator operator in the factory.
Booker acknowledges that each viewer’s personal history shapes their reading and experience of a work. She says:
“The role of the artist is to tell an honest story, drawn from their own experiences, and the events of the past and present that will shape our collective future. The goal of art is to connect with an audience and convey something that will alter their perception of the world around them, their own role within it, and hopefully make a positive impact along the way.”
