Paul Rucker

Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who often combines media, integrating live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. Much of his current work focuses on the Prison Industrial Complex and the many issues accompanying incarceration in its relationship to slavery. He has presented performances and visual art exhibitions across the country and has collaborated with schools, active prisons, and inactive prisons such as Alcatraz. His work is intended to be a powerful catalyst for community dialogue. In one of his largest installations, REWIND, Rucker addresses social and cultural issues in race, class, and power by re-envisioning historical events and connecting them to current issues of power and injustice in America. The two 2015 showings of REWIND garnered critical praise, including Baltimore Magazine “Best Artist 2015,” Baltimore City Paper “Best Solo Show 2015,” and coverage by Huffington Post, Artnet News, Washington Post, The Root, and Real News Network. In 2013-2015, Rucker was the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the Maryland Institute and College of Art. In 2015, he received the prestigious Mary Sawyer Baker Award, a cash award that also came with a show at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Rucker is a 2012 Creative Capital grantee, a 2014 MAP Fund grantee, a 2015 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant recipient, a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, and most recently named a 2018 TED Fellow.