Paul Rucker

Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer and musician who often combines media, live performance, sound, original compositions and visual art. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research and basic human emotions surrounding a particular subject matter. Much of Paul’s current work focuses on the prison-industrial complex and the relationship between incarceration and slavery. Paul performed and exhibited visual art exhibitions across the country, including in schools, active prisons and inactive prisons such as Alcatraz, and has collaborated with educational institutions to address the issue of mass incarceration.

Paul is a Guggenheim Fellow, TED Senior Fellow, Rauschenburg Fellow, and an iCubed Arts Research Fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University. Currently, he is the Curator for Creative Collaboration for VCUarts at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Paul, with his Art for Justice grant, created a project on the prison economy, including a large-scale installation on Art Students League’s (ASL) façade, an accompanying microsite, a series of educational and public programs in partnership with ASL, a cello composition on a sidewalk-level sound installation with relevant text, and artist talks.