53
plates created and intentionally broken by artist Rashaun Rucker
NEVER FREE TO REST Rashaun Rucker
Rashaun Rucker’s exhibition Never Free to Rest, exhibited in our gallery during the fall 2021 semester, represents the last works in his remarkable ornithology series that explores the rock pigeon as metaphor for the systemic debasement, mistreatment, and conditioning of Black men in America. As source material for his drawings, Rucker utilizes images of men he knows and photographs of men incarcerated in the U.S. prison industrial complex. The photographs of those incarcerated are taken from various websites and newsletters and then collaged or altered to create the work. “The work is intended to be a record of their lives, a marker of the social conditioning and heavy challenges we face as Black men,” Rucker explained. “The exhibition is influenced by the inescapable I Hit More fian I Missed, Rashaun Rucker 12
A Perilous Perch, Rashaun Rucker