Join Paul Rucker for an intimate hour of conversation, listening, questions and answers. Among other topics, we’ll spend time with his FOREVER series, a portion of which is currently on exhibit at BIMA.

In his words, “Forever acknowledges civil rights martyrs that have not, and will probably never appear on the US Postage Stamps; not just the well-known supported and acknowledged civil rights leaders, for instance, but the legions of people who were unwilling participants, victims of racially motivated violence.” Viewers are called both to consider and to act: “What if our criteria (for identifying civil rights martyrs or commemorating them on stamps) were an acknowledgment that aimed not just at putting the past behind us, but taking responsibility for it. Restoring to view what is often pushed away, and making something whole from both our owned, and unowned, experiences.”

This event is taking place as a Zoom webinar. Only the presentors’ cameras and microphones will be on for this event.

Tickets: FREE, registration required.

https://www.biartmuseum.org/…/artist-talk-a…/

—

ABOUT PAUL RUCKER
Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who often combines media, integrating 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 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 educational institutions to address the issue of mass incarceration. Presentations have taken place in schools, active prisons and also inactive prisons such as Alcatraz.

Rucker has received numerous grants, awards and residencies for visual art and music. He is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a 2014, 2018, 2019 MAP (Multi-Arts Production) Fund Grantee for performance. In 2015 he received a prestigious Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant as well as the Mary Sawyer Baker Award. In 2016 Paul received the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist fellowship and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, for which he is the first artist in residence at the new National Museum of African American Culture.

Residencies include MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Ucross Foundation, Art OMI, Banff Centre, Pilchuck Glass School, Rauschenberg Residency, Joan Mitchell Residency, Loghave, Montalvo, Hermitage, Hemera Artist Retreat, Air Serembe, Creative Alliance and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. He will be a Master Teacher at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2021. In 2013-2015, he was the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

He was awarded a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2018 TED Fellowship, a 2020 TED Senior Fellowship and the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation and Artist Trust. His most recent award is a 2020 Art for Justice Fund Fellowship.

Rucker is an iCubed Arts Research Fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia and Curator for Creative Collaboration for VCUarts.

‍