Description:
An irregularly cut, flat piece of black rubber with patterns and images in relief on its surface. Small tires line the left boundry of the rubber, a child's face and dress appear in the upper left and smaller faces, tires, and milk cartons are dispersed through out. Printed on the milk cartons are the child's face and the text, SAY NO TO DRUGS.
Label Text:
Exhibtion label text from Faint/Hidden/Shrouded: Contemplating Obscurity (March 27-May 10, 2024):
Chakaia Booker utilizes repeated motifs of a Black child’s face, automobile tires and tire treads, and milk cartons printed with the phrase “SAY NO TO DRUGS.” The motifs, compressed into the velvet-like rubber material, create a tactile surface of black-on-black elements. Booker invites us to discover hidden images revealed in the rubber by looking closely from different angles.
Booker works with recycled tires to call attention to our in the process of turning a natural resource into objects of convenience that are readily discarded. Booker explains, “my intention is to translate materials into imagery that will stimulate people to consider themselves as a part of their environment—one piece of it.” - Graduate curators: Ruthie Baker, MFA Studio Arts; Simone Cambridge, MA History of Art & Architecture; and Olivia Haynes PhD in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMASS
Making Their Mark label text:
Using her signature material of rubber, Booker has created a sculptural relief to comment on such themes as black identity and urban ecology. According to Booker the adaptability and hardness of the rubber represents, "the survival of the Africans in the diaspora." For Booker the black color of the tires represents African skin, and the patterned treads represent tribal designs. - Pauline Miller, ICP Intern, Summer 2014
Label text (excert) from graduate curated exhibition: "We Gotta Get Out of This Place - Transportive Art" March 24 - May 1 and September 30 - December 11, 2022; Tirzah Frank (MA 2022) and Cecily Hughes (MA 2022)
Chakaia Booker often works creatively with recycled tires. The texture and smell of rubber immediately conjure movement—wheels for cars, buses, and taxis—then lure the viewer in with a tread that dissolves into intricate details upon closer scrutiny. The humble and familiar material upends expectations of traditional sculpture, making the work’s delicate pictorial qualities all the more gripping. As an “everyday” material, rubber reveals that complex worlds can lie within a common substance, and whole worlds can be cobbled together from a mundane medium, when necessary.
Tags:
African American; diaspora; urban; race; social commentary Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+2012.6.2.1 |
