Tire, Tires, Tired, 2016
Used Tires

Tire, Tires, Tired is in part a study of geometry and of material, prompted by Pau Atela’s Math/Art Studio course. Resembling toruses, tires are made circular and sturdy to roll as they exert force onto the ground.

Used and abandoned tires were taken from a local tire store, and I scrub the tires clean and I cut each tire into four pieces using a bolt cutter, circular saw, and a sawzall. This process involved a close look at the tire’s structure and material and testing to figure out the right tools for them.

Tires evoke the memory of family vacations, long car rides, traveling. The worn out quality of the tires show the history and distance they have traveled. By taking apart the tires and and cleaning each of them, I am deconstructing my memories that I associate with them, and I set up the pieces of my childhood in front of the tree, my home-base, and begin my performance installation. I pick up a tire from the pile and place it in front of the tree. I walk back to the tree, I pick up another, and measuring the distance with my footsteps, I place the other in front of the first tire a little further away and repeat. I move back and forth towards the tree and away from it. Marina Abramović’s “Balkan Baroque” film, this performative repetition creates a transformative space that makes the message of the installation more approachable. As the performance progresses, the linear arrangement of the tire pieces show that they are further and further apart from each other, showing the inevitable separation and gap that develops through the years spent traveling away from home.

The juxtaposition between the materials – the rubber on the tires and the nature around it –brings attention to environmental issues that linked to the massive population of cars and other transportations. By recycling the material and transforming it into an art form, as artist Chakaia Booker also does, I hope to make my audiences think about effects of the art and its material on the environment.