Paul Rucker is a multimedia visual artist, composer, and musician. His practice often integrates live performance, original musical compositions, and visual art installation. For nearly two decades, Rucker has used his own brand of art making as a social practice, which illuminates the legacy of enslavement in America and its relationship to the current socio-political moment. 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.
Rucker has received numerous grants, awards, and residencies for visual art and music. He is a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship awardee, 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, becoming the first artist in residence at the National Museum of African American Culture.
Residencies include the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Ucross Foundation, Art OMI, Banff Center, Pilchuck Glass School, Rauschenberg Residency, Joan Mitchell Residency, Loghaven, Montalvo, Hermitage, Hemera Artist Retreat, Air Serembe, and Creative Alliance. He will be a Master Teacher at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2026. In 2013-2015, he was the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He has been awarded 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. He has received support from Ford/Art for Justice Fund for 2000 and 2022, and the Mellon Foundation for 2022.
Rucker is an iCubed Arts Research Fellow and Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia and Curator for Creative Collaboration for VCUarts.
Paul Rucker is the founding and executive director of Cary Forward Museum in Richmond, VA, opening in 2026.