Featured photo: Chakaia Booker. Photo by Stephen Allen. Image courtesy the artist.
Flint, MI—MW Gallery will welcome celebrated sculptor Chakaia Booker for an Artist Talk on December 6, 2025. The artist will be sharing an overview of her career: work before rubber, early rubber and rubber work today.
About her art, Booker states, “My intention is to translate materials into imagery that will stimulate people to consider themselves as part of their environment—one piece of it…I believe art should dialogue with viewers.”
An internationally renowned and widely collected artist, Chakaia Booker is known for creating monumental, abstract works from recycled tires and stainless steel for both the gallery and outdoor public spaces. Her works are included in more than 40 permanent collections, including the Mott-Warsh Collection and the Flint Institute of Arts, and they have been exhibited across the US, in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Booker’s sculptures are constructed of salvaged rubber, primarily old tires, which she cuts into strips and shapes, then wraps and folds the material into a variety of fluid forms. She exploits the qualities of the material—the pattern between the layering of metal threads and rubber-gluing agents, the rust-stained wire, the remaining tread, the movement and color—to define the character of each work that also varies depending on the tire’s age, brand and construction design. The surfaces display elegant, yet surprising patterns using hard-edged to organic flowing shapes, employing flat and high-gloss finishes.
Chakaia Booker (born 1953) is a native of Newark, New Jersey. She earned a BFA in sociology from Rutgers University in 1976 and a MFA from the City College of New York in 1993. Her work was exhibited in the Whitney Biennial in 2000, the “Twentieth Century American Sculpture” exhibition at the White House in 1996, and in many group exhibitions in the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. She is represented in numerous permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY; Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; the Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; and of course, the Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, MI. She currently works in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Presented in conjunction with MW Gallery’s exhibition “This Bitter Earth: Living in Harmony with Nature”, on view September 12, 2025 through January 24, 2026, is work from Booker’s artwork “Minor Illusion”. This exhibit features artworks from the Mott-Warsh Collection that reflect on humanity’s complex relationship with our natural world, and with one another. Along with Chakaia Booker, featured artists include Ron Adams, Bisa Butler, Nanette Carter, Nick Cave, Emilio Cruz, Maren Hassinger, Pope.L, Howardena Pindell, Angelbert Metoyer and Bernard Williams.
“Artist Talk: Chakaia Booker” will take place on Saturday, December 6, 2025, at 2 p.m. at MW Gallery, located at 815 S. Saginaw St., Flint, MI 48502. Gallery entrance is on E. Court St. This event is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Thursdays and Fridays 11a.m. – 6 p.m.; Saturdays 11 a.m. – 5 p.m,; and the 2nd Friday of each month 11a.m. – 9 p.m. for Flint ARTWALK.
Please call (810) 835-4900, or visit http://www.m-wc.org for more information.
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About MW Gallery and the Mott Warsh Collection
MW Gallery is the permanent home of the Mott-Warsh Collection (MWC)—a privately owned, publicly shared fine art collection that comprises over 1100 works by artists of the African diaspora and those who reflect on it. The gallery features expansive exhibitions drawn from the collection and facilitates community engagement with art through its programs.
The MWC was established by Maryanne Mott and her late husband Herman Warsh in 2001. Their primary intent was to bring art into non-traditional venues where it could be encountered by people as they went about their daily lives. They formed community partnerships with institutions that had an interest in making the collection visible to their memberships, clients, visitors and participants. Today, rotating exhibits of MWC artworks can be found in the public library, churches, health clinics, colleges, universities and more in the greater Flint region. The collection also lends to internationally and nationally touring museum exhibitions.
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