Monumental and Thought-Provoking Work at ICA Miami

Artist Chakaia Booker isn't much of a talker. She prefers to let her work speak for itself – and speak it does.

“Chakaia Booker: The Observance” is one of two monumental exhibits currently at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami in the Miami Design District.

The first comprehensive museum survey of the New Jersey-born, New York-based multimedia artist's four decades of work is on ICA Miami’s third floor. That's where the attention grabbers are imposing sculptures created and woven from discarded rubber tires. One floor below are large-scale paintings by Janiva Ellis, in what is her first solo museum exhibition.

Alex Gartenfeld, ICA Miami’s artistic director, explained the importance of both as he offered a tour throughout exhibitions, pointing out what mounting these shows at the museum means to the continuing elevation of Miami as an art center.

"With the Chakaia Booker exhibition, it’s the first for this artist that brings together decades to highlight some of the most important signature work, as well as demonstrate her range of abstractions," he said.

The survey of Booker's work is such an important happening in the art world that the New York Times published a feature story on the exhibit last month. It is Booker's first comprehensive show in a decade, and, the writer pointed out, the largest ever by the artist's own estimate.

For 33-year-old painter Ellis – a little less than half the age of Booker – it's her debut solo museum exhibition. To have such a big museum show for such a young artist is unusual, said Gartenfeld, but it had been top of mind for him for some time.

As one of the curators of the 2018 New Museum triennial in New York City, he had included three allegorical canvases of the Hawaiian-born and California-bred painter. Now, he’s able to devote a space to showcase new works made over the past year while Ellis was working and creating in Miami.

Both exhibits were organized by ICA Miami and curated by Gartenfeld and Stephanie Seidel.

Since he knows the lay of the land better than anyone, Gartenfeld's tour of the exhibitions is no quick swoop. It's a way to see each show with an eye for the importance of a sculptor who he says has been underrepresented and underappreciated, and for a painter who is "a really important voice" in art today.

Starting on the third floor at “The Observance,” we stop at the entrance. The scent of tire rubber is unmistakable, like being in a Goodyear store.

The first work straight ahead is "OVER, the Rainbow" (2008), where plastic gallon water jugs empty out from a twisted assemblage of tire scraps. Although it is entirely abstract, there is an obvious inherent commentary on the tons of plastic that pours out of consumerism and into the environment.

"Encoded in her use of abstraction, she raises open-ended questions about what it means for our landscape, whether it's cultural or ecological," Gartenfeld explained.

There is various social commentary within the work, tires and rubber with a resonance of the development of cities, but the artist has said that it is for viewers to create their own interpretations.

"Whether I use an architectural format or something to look at, I believe art should dialogue with viewers," Booker told Jan Garden Castro in a rare interview in 2003 in Sculpture magazine.

But there are interpretations of the work of the self-proclaimed "Rubber Queen,” of the confines of slavery, the displacement of people in the development of cities – especially for the working class – and urban waste and blight, metaphors for Blackness that reference African American identities, and themes of gender, transformation and renewal.

"I am concerned about political, social and economic issues facing different groups of people over time," said Booker, who doesn't commit to interviews, but did agree to answer a few questions via email for this story.

A large, open space in which to allow her work to breathe is what make this survey of her work so awe-inspiring.

"You can't get that nuance in a smaller gallery," Gartenfeld said.

While the iconic rubber sculptures are here, the space is filled with other work, which shows different facets of Booker’s skill.

There are her paintings, acrylic on canvas, from the early 1990s, prints from 2009, and acrylic and acid-free paper on prepared wood panel with titles like "Delinquent" and "Graffiti" that, although less dimensional, have the same depth as her sculptures. They have a mesmerizing way of drawing the viewer in to see what's behind the many layers.

In speaking to having mediums in one room – the rubber sculptures, painting, photography, printmaking and ceramics, Booker said: "The exhibition includes different media that I have worked with to express my ideas."

Booker began her career making wearable sculpture in the 1980s, and those early explorations can be seen in the woven, textile-like qualities of her rubber sculptures. Craft is an important starting point of her work, and weaving remains an important part of her practice, according to Gartenfeld.

"It's the influence of New York," he said. "About people on the street who would make and sell handicraft that were of great quality – that could be sold on the street or in Bergdorf Goodman. It's that way of how objects can move across place and economics that are really important to Chakaia, too."

He and his co-curator focused on monumental works.

"We picked moments in her career that were really pivotal," said Gartenfeld.

Illustrative of this is the elaborate namesake of the show, "The Observance," which has rows upon rows of deconstructed rubber tubing hanging from an armature. The work was first shown in 1995 at York College in Queens, N.Y., and now it is reimagined at ICA Miami. When it was first installed, the pieces hung from the ceiling, but it has been reconstructed here with the added armature, which gives it more of a cocoon-like presence, inviting the visitor to become immersed.

"Monumentality is a big part of it. To be with Booker's work is to take it in," Gartenfeld said.

One floor below are Ellis' paintings, which were created over the past year while the artist was in Miami.

"She was here longer than expected," Gartenfeld explained, due to COVID-19 and the lockdown. "So, it was a transformational year for her."

That transformation and past works are part of the exhibition entitled "Rats."

Complicated and compelling, Ellis is known for her absurdist and satirical paintings that explore the African American experience through a lens that is interrogating in its perspective. Her works are personal, with a juxtaposition of heaviness and levity, oftentimes inserting cartoons or anime figures into art historical references.

"What's interesting to see is how she appropriates cartoons and mixes them so dexterously into the rest of the painting,” said Gartenfeld. “This is a reflection point in her work where she is specifically drawing upon art history – and especially European art history – that have been exclusionary to artists of color.”