December 6, 2020

 

What is immediately striking about Rashaun Rucker’s 2020 linocut, The Procession, is its weight in both subject and aesthetic. Two men hoist a casket over their shoulders, which takes up a good portion of the print: almost as much as the two men themselves. While one man makes unwavering eye contact with the viewer, the other glances purposefully away. Both of their expressions are laden with the heaviness of not only the casket they carry, but a familiarity with mourning, passed down from generation to generation, that being Black in America entails. There is a sense of their exhaustion, from not being able to rest in order to stay safe and from constantly fighting for themselves and their children to become who they are meant to be; for the opportunity to flourish rather than just survive. For men so often taken out of context as dangerous, their expressions and position tell a different story, speaking to the ever-present danger of being Black within America. Deep gouges create texture which surrounds the two men and shows the turmoil of this way of living. Perhaps this is where the man in the foreground glances, towards the block of darkness that presses down on them in the constant periphery, where it must be watched closely so as not to consume them entirely.

Rashaun Rucker was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1978. As a child and teenager, he moved back and forth from North Carolina to Detroit every summer, giving him a unique vantage point of both the rural South as well as the city and the different ways of navigating both spaces. After attending North Carolina Central University and Marygrove college where he studied art, Rucker moved to Detroit, where he became a photojournalist for the Free Press. After receiving numerous awards for his photographic work, including being the first African American to be named Michigan Press Photographer of the Year, Rucker would later turn to drawing and print making highly inspired by the work of artists such as Charles White and Jacob Lawrence. His highly renowned works often explore the challenges of being Black in America, working out how to push beyond the spaces that Blackness has been relegated to, coping with the realities of loss and violence and the fear for loved ones, all in the face of trying to discover oneself.

Written by Samantha Hohmann

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