‘Treading New Ground’ Confronts Consumerism’s Environmental Toll 

By Mya Trujillo

In her first solo showcase in Washington in a decade, sculptor Chakaia Booker’s “Treading New Ground” at the National Gallery’s “In the Tower” series uses discarded tires to emphasize human activity’s environmental impact. By focusing on rubber tires, Booker’s work is a step toward reducing industrial waste, reusing materials and recycling them into intricately beautiful testaments toward minimizing pollution. 

Curated by Kanitra Fletcher, the exhibit features three relief sculptures made of rubber tires and wood, titled “Echoes in Black (Industrial Cicatrization),” “It’s So Hard to be Green” and “Acid Rain.” These pieces, created between 1996 and 2001, highlight the ongoing fight for a cleaner and more sustainable planet. 

Booker, inspired by the large volume of abandoned tires she encountered in New York City in the 1980s, has showcased tires’ versatility, using their irregularities to create various perspectives by manipulating their shape into rubber mazes of coils, rings and spikes. 

“Incorporating stains, cracks… Chakaia creates a range of tones and textures that transform this industrial waste into abstract sculpture, emphasizing [human’s] relationship and responsibility to the environment,” said E. Carmen Ramos, the museum’s chief curatorial and conservation officer.

Why Tires?: Raising Awareness, A Call to Action  

Through her craftsmanship with these found objects, Booker is creating a link between monumental artistry and waste reduction. 

Tires are made of polymers like rubber, nylon and silicone, which contribute to their durability and resistance to weather. These conditions are ideal for the large-scale public and outdoor projects that Booker has been producing since the 1990s. 

According to the Federal Highway Administration, approximately 280 million tires are disposed of every year in the U.S., with 30 million reused, leaving the remaining 250 million scrap tires to be dealt with. 

While Booker understands that throwing away tires is inevitable for many motorists, she hopes people can be more conscious of what happens to their waste after disposal. 

“People aren’t aware of where their tires go once they take them off their cars,” Booker told The Informer. “They drive in, put [new ones] on the car and they drive off, so there’s not that kind of concern.”

The same materials contributing to the ingenuity behind using rubber tires as an art medium are also the reason why they can’t be easily melted down and recycled into new products. Their lack of biodegradability causes them to take 50 to 80 years to break down, with many states prohibiting whole tires from landfills as they can release methane gas into the atmosphere. 

The scale of Booker’s sculptures– which measure between 20 and 21 feet wide and stand 10 feet tall– draws attention to the magnitude of the constant disposal of tires. At more than two decades old, each piece shows the longevity of the materials used, opening the audience’s eyes to the fact that garbage does not disappear when thrown away. 

“Just being able to see the monumental-scale piece is important because I think one of the reasons she adopted the tire is so that she could create a large-scale world,” Fletcher told the Informer. “She knew she’d have this endless supply of material because of how we go through them constantly.” 

Challenging Audiences to Consider Relationship with Waste

According to the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association, the recycling rate for tires in the U.S. increased from 11% in 1990 to 79% in 2023, making them “one of the most recycled products” in the nation. Sometimes scraps are made into shreds that become rubber mulch for playgrounds, additives to asphalt for increased pavement safety, athletics tracks and more. 

Booker’s artwork, which started almost 30 years ago, actively repurposes these materials, which are constantly in demand and simultaneously being scrapped, but she hopes her sculptures bring the audience’s attention to their relationship with the environment across various types of waste and that people remain mindful of products’ longevity before purchasing. 

“[This] becomes very important nowadays because of the abundance of the kinds of quantities that are being replicated and produced, even for clothing,” Booker said. “You have this abundance of stuff that people are wearing maybe once or twice… so they’re not thinking about the whole consumption of what that means to have something last longer.” 

Fletcher hopes the exhibit will inspire viewers to take a moment and think about their relationship with waste, transforming their perceptions of the world and inspiring them to contribute to a healthier environment and a thriving planet. 

“She makes us pay attention to those kinds of materials and all the interesting details, textures, tones and surfaces,” Fletcher said. “If you can find beauty in those pieces, then you can think about other ways to beautify the world around us, too.” 

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