Chakaia Booker
(b. 1953, Newark, NJ)
She/her
Serendipity (1999/2019)
Recycled tires, hardware
The central question driving the exhibition, what is a timely monument for Newark, is echoed in an installation of Newark native Chakaia Booker’s Serendipity. Rather than building monuments from bronze or stone, Booker repurposes discarded tires as the raw materials for monumental public art. In Serendipity, she transforms the everyday byproduct of a rubber tire found throughout post-industrial cities into an intricately designed sculptural question mark, held together, piece by piece, in an interlocking system of components she configured specifically for the site of Military Park. The expansive, undulating question mark functions as a frame to view the park anew and a shield from its established sightlines. As Booker has remarked of this work in a previous installation, “the word ‘serendipity’ is about finding something accidentally and then having it turn into something valuable.” Serendipity pushes viewers to consider monuments not as answers, but as starting points to engage memory and presence in the city.
This is the first time Booker’s work is shown publicly in Newark and on the twentieth anniversary of its premiere in the Public Art Fund’s Beyond the Monument exhibition in New York City’s MetroTech Commons.
Artist Bio
Chakaia Booker is an internationally renowned and widely collected American sculptor known for creating monumental, abstract works from recycled tires and stainless steel for both the gallery and outdoor public spaces. Booker’s works are contained in more than 40 public collections and have been exhibited across the U.S., in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. Recent public installation highlights include Millennium Park, Chicago (2016-2018), Garment District Alliance Broadway Plazas, New York, NY (2014), and the National Museum of Women in the Arts New York Avenue Sculpture Project, Washington D.C. (2012).