Join us for a presentation by Chakaia Booker to celebrate opening weekend of In the Tower: Chakaia Booker: Treading New Ground, on view April 5–August 3, 2025. For over four decades, Booker has cut, coiled, and contorted tires, sculpting the industrial waste into spectacular abstract forms. She uses discarded tires both as a commentary on cultural histories and experiences and as a sustainable practice, encouraging us to consider the symbolic resonance of the material as well as the effect rubber can have on our future.
The exhibition presents three monumental wall relief sculptures—Acid Rain (2001), Echoes in Black (Industrial Cicatrization) (1996), and It’s So Hard to Be Green (2000). Each sculpture spans 20 to 21 feet wide and features a mass of curled bands of tire rubber, some interspersed with spiky shards, coiled strips, and loops made from inner tubes. Also featured is Booker’s six-part photogravure series Foundling Warrior Quest (II 21C) (2010), which showcases the artist as a mythical being foraging in a harsh, industrial landscape.
About the presenter
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 1980s, Booker has exhibited across the US and 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 (2005); Chakaia Booker: The Observance (2021), a career survey at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and inclusion in the seminal exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera (2018), which placed the artist in the company of influential and uniquely identifiable abstractionists Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Ellsworth Kelly, Thornton Dial, Louise Nevelson, and Cy Twombly.
The Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series provides a forum for distinguished artists to discuss the genesis and evolution of their work in their own words. Dr. Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel and the Honorable Carl Spielvogel generously endowed this series to make such conversations available to the public.
Sign-language interpreters and guides for visitors who are blind or have low vision are available for programs. Please call (202) 842-6905 or email [email protected] three weeks in advance for an appointment. Learn more about accessibility.