Iriana Rucker

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

Ana Rucker (b. South Carolina) is Brooklyn based an interdisciplinary artist that received an MFA in Visual Art from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2026. Rucker was also a 2026 participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her practice investigates possibilities for Black utopias, belonging, and collective memory through sculpture, photography, video, and performance. Informed by literary analysis and archival appropriation, Rucker examine how histories are preserved, obscured, and continually rewritten through personal and collective cultural experiences. The artist particularly interested in material as a metaphor for speculative futures, the Black diasporic archive as a site of both memory and healing, and the Black body as a space through which knowledge, absence, and history are embodied and transmitted. Her artistic foundation has been shaped by institutions, artists, and individuals committed to the preservation and interpretation of historical and cultural art. Growing up in rural upstate South Carolina, She became increasingly aware of the limited spaces that affirmed and uplifted both of her Black and queer identities. This awareness continues to inform her practice and the questions that guide her work. She considers how the creation of “Black Utopias” provides opportunities to think about freedom, celebration, care, and belonging while remaining accountable to the histories that shape our present world. Across her work,...

Artwork