Since mid-April, a 35-foot-tall labyrinth of steel and rubber has loomed over the storefronts of Manhattan’s Garment District. The monumental public sculpture, titled Shaved Portions, is the creation of Chakaia Booker, an artist known for her inspired use of salvaged tires in sculptures large and small.
Surrounded by towering buildings, the installation winds through the pedestrian plaza on Broadway between 39th and 40th streets. The honeycomb pattern lends it a rhythm and tension that feels at once playful and ominous, like a portal to an unknown world. It is a striking pairing, this artwork and the city around it.
Shaved Portions, a joint initiative between the Garment District Alliance and the New York City Department of Transportation’s Art Program, will be on view through November 1. The sculpture was originally commissioned by the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center for its Campbell Art Park in 2021, but takes on new life in this New York City iteration. On a recent visit, pigeons, tourists, and locals alike flocked to the structure, puzzling through its construction.
“Sculpture cannot be disassociated from the environment it is displayed in, just as the environment cannot help but be influenced by the sculpture,” says Booker, 71, who has also installed public artworks in Millennium Park in Chicago and Military Park in Newark, the city where she grew up.
As with other works of Booker’s, notions of labor, ecology, gender, racial politics, and consumerism are at play here—all heightened by the history and associations of the Garment District. “It is about hopefulness and purpose; it is about the legacy of the humanity we all carry forward,” the artist says.
