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, Paul 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. Paul has received numerous grants, awards, and residencies for visual art and music. He is a Creative Capital grantee in visual art as well as a multiple grantee from MAP Fund for performance. He was awarded the 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. 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. He has received support from Ford/Art for Justice Fund for 2000 and 2022, and the Mellon Foundation for 2022 for his museum Cary Forward, opening in 2025. Paul is an iCubed Arts Research Fellow and assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia and curator for creative collaboration for VCUarts. He is also the founding/executive director of Cary Forward.