Chakaia Booker is an African American artist who was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1953. She received a Bachelor of Art in Sociology from Rutgers University in 1976. She then received her Master of Fine Arts from the City College of New York in 1993. She began working with rubber tires in the early 1990s and presently continues to work in this medium.
Her sculptures are said to address African American identity. The black tires symbolize the strength of African American identity while the color nuances are meant to evoke the complexities of the black humans application.