Paul Rucker

Bio

Paul Rucker, a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, is a visual artist, composer, and musician who often combines media, integrating live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. For the past two years his installation, REWIND, has been traveling across the country. The show links the past with the present by visually embodying America’s uncomfortable history regarding issues of race, power, and social justice. Using text, video, and sculptural installations, REWIND re-envisions and re-imagines historical events and alludes to their relationship with current issues of power and injustice in America. In particular, the show combines traditional sculpture and other visual media alongside musical practices to illustrate and analyze the disproportional representation of young people of color in juvenile detention, the economics of the prison-industrial complex, the lingering effects of slavery, the explosive growth of the US prison system, and the relationships among these trends.