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Robin Wheelwright Ness 

Skins, Scales, Spikes and Armor: Chakaia Booker

Chakaia Booker creates abstract monumental sculptures which reference African textiles, body

decoration, and scarification, evoking issues of black culture and identity. Her complex dialogues and

sub narratives play along surface and structure, creating conflicting emotions. Booker's sculptures can

seem “alluring, threatening, encompassing, vulnerable, majestic, humorous, ominous, or tender”. 1  The

surface finishes range from rich and lustrous to dried and cracking, “the color nuances ranging from blue-

black, deep grey and brown, sometimes stamped with blue or red represent the range of African American

skin tones”.2  It has been suggested that these surfaces are metaphors for the African American

experience. Booker has said that her “sculpture derives from, and symbolizes, personal issues and

historical events. It suggests the many dimensions of human adversity and the hope for internal

awakening which can lead to positive changes...through collective effort." 3  Booker’s work is compelling

when considering ways in which a work of art could induce the deep and complex emotions which

surround the history of slavery, and provoke ranges of emotional and psychological states which would be

integral to a monument memorializing Rhode Island’s history of slavery and the slave trade. 

Booker is not a “monument artist”; however she is one of the best known contemporary

American sculptors working today. She produces large scale public art, and has works in the permanent

collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, the Newark Museum, and

others. Booker is best known for her work utilizing discarded materials, yet the very materiality of her

large scale pieces, which makes them so successful, becomes problematic when considering

memorialization and the historical monument. Memorial art must stand up to time, resist the elements,

and work within the environment. Although the artist frequently uses repurposed materials in her

sculptures, she also works with wood, bronze, and aluminum. The large scale work “The Wave” (installed

in Washington Park, New Jersey, 2008) is a brushed stainless steel sculpture standing 14 feet high and 35

feet wide. Booker is currently looking at ways in which to translate her works with discarded materials

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1Nichols, "Chakaia Booker: Material Matters", 167

2  Lilly Wei, Queen of Rubber Soul, Art News (January 2002), pp.88  

3  Corcoran College of Art and Design on Chakaria Booker  http://www.corcoran.edu/exhibitions-events/visiting-artists/past/chakaia-booker 

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into bronze. 

Initially, it was textiles (and her mother’s and grandmother’s use of them), along with weaving

and basketry, that influenced Booker as an artist. She created wearable sculptures in the 1980’s, 

fashioning work from discarded materials which she found at construction sites. After studying ceramicsand delving into metal work, she in her own words “woke up one morning and had to create large scale

works”. 4  She abandoned metal work and returned to discarded materials, mainly found steel belt tires.

The tires are said to address the strength of African American identity, the tread pattern being linked to

scarification, body painting, and traditional textiles utilizing geometric forms of African cultures.

Booker’s work process points to the physicality of labor. “It takes a lot of body work” 5 she said when

describing how she cuts through thousands of discarded tires. “Salvaging such defiant beauty from scraps

of resilient, black rubber provides a compelling metaphor of African American survival in the modern

world.” 6 Booker’s work indirectly references slavery, and her oeuvre “is loaded with social concerns that

come from the gut and the heart, merging flavors from the American South and the American North.7 

A highly evocative, multifarious, monumental sculpture can only be considered as one

component to a successful memorial. The conveyance of the emotional weight of history must pair with

historical information leading to pedagogy. As stated by Mary Marshall Clark, the director of the Oral

History Research Office at Columbia University, “the lived experience is more complex than subsequent

interpretations reveal”. 8 In memorial art, fine art and the historical archive must work in concert to

address the complexity of the lived experience. Philippe Kridelka, the Director of UNESCO’s New York 

Office and Representative to the UN, has said of the memorial to victims of slavery to be constructed at

the United Nations that “the monument will not only be a symbol, but part of an education process in

memory of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade”. 9 Likewise, a memorial to the history of Rhode

Island’s involvement in the trade, situated on the Brown University campus, must go far beyond

symbolism and engage in education.

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4Provocative Visions: Race and   Identity — A Panel Discussion. Met, February 21, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agYk2wItrsY 

5 Chakaia Booker’s Art: Where the Rubber Meets the Road   http://eco-artware-notes.com/tag/chakaia-booker/  

6 Lilly Wei, Queen of Rubber Soul, Art News (January 2002), p.88

7 The Language of Life: A Conversation with Chakaia Booker by Jan Garden Castro 

http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag03/janfeb03/booker/booker.shtml 8

The September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project: A First Report, Journal of American History Volume89, Issue2, p.5699

UN News Center, September 30, 2011  http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39899&Cr=slave&Cr1 

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Could the chaotic complexity of the memorial’s sculpture contrast with the geometric order of a

triangle base? The triangle would serve as a literal and visual representation of Rhode Island’s corner of 

the Triangle Trade and a symbol of the trade’s ordered, mechanical and geographic function. It is known

that at least a thousand voyages were made by Rhode Islanders to the coast of Africa; carrying over one-

hundred thousand Africans into New World slavery.10 The Brown University Steering Committee on

Slavery and Justice determined that it is possible to identify by name some seven hundred Rhode

Islanders who owned or captained slave ships. 11 Could it then be possible to search the archival record for

the names of these ships, along with the vast numbers of human cargo they carried? Could these hundreds

of ship’s names, be linked to the human numbers they carried and be worked into the design of the

memorial’s base, or on the surface of the sculpture itself?

Booker’s 1997 piece “The Conversationalist” was exhibited at the DeCordova Museum in 2010as part of the show “Chakaia Booker: In and Out”. The Museum described the work:

“Like an actual conversation, this piece physically represents a gradual building of 

elements that climax at a point of tension or harmony. The many angles of this

sculpture create negative spaces that represent opposing arguments and varying

opinions. Beginning with conflict and disagreement at its base, the form labors to

break free of emotional constraints as it pushes towards the sky and comes to a

realization. While independently complex, the two segments that define the overall

layout of the sculpture arrive at a final point of accord at the apex. Symbolically,

Booker’s sculptural “conversation” explores the potential for unity and

understanding that would ideally originate from conversations between those of 

different beliefs and values”.12 

Although “The Conversation” references dialogue, arguments, and varying opinions (critical

themes in a memorial to slavery), the nature of the work’s structure and use of the materials calls to mind

architectural ruins, a ships skeleton which has emerged from decades of mud, charred fortifications, or the

inner structure of the body. The surface textures of the piece evoke the physicality of skin, bone, hair,

sweat, melding with dirt, iron, wood, rope, and tar, leaving the viewer with a strong sense of bodily chaos

and despair. Looking at Chakaia Booker’s sculpture, one is aware that a powerful story, a tense history, a

complex narrative exists and is speaking through time. Indeed, Booker believes that “art is a storytelling,

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10Slavery and Justice: Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, p.10

11 Ibid12

DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum http://www.decordova.org/art/sculpture-park/conversationalist 

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but the story is open, fluid, mysterious”. 13 If the Brown University Public Arts Committee does

commission a memorial that recognizes the University’s ties to slavery and transatlantic slave trading,

Chakaia Booker merits consideration for its design and execution. Her complex artistic vision, social

commentary, and representation of African American identity, would make a powerful contribution to a

“living site of memory” which would invite “reflection and fresh discovery without provoking paralysis

or shame.”14 

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13 DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum http://www.decordova.org/art/sculpture-park/conversationalist 14The Slavery and Justice Commission Report. Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Brown University. p.1

The Conversationalist, 1997, rubber tires, wood, 20′ x 21′ x 12′ Exhibited -DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 2010

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Chakaia Booker (SCAD Permanent Collection)

Links:

http://www.chakaiabooker.com/  

http://video.pbs.org/video/1674600932/  

http://www.decordova.org/art/exhibition/chakaia-booker-and-out 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jag9889/3865568592/lightbox/