This selection of studies offers a closer look at the foundational ideas and visual language behind American Ornithology, Rashaun Rucker’s ongoing exploration of identity, incarceration, and surveillance.

Rooted in the symbolic merging of pigeons and Black male figures, American Ornithology interrogates systems of confinement - both physical and psychological - while drawing on historic texts, personal narratives, and urban ecology. These studies reveal Rucker’s iterative process: gestural marks, experimental compositions, and raw visual juxtapositions that ultimately inform the larger body of work.

Presented here as standalone pieces, each study contains its own quiet intensity - evidence of a practice that is as investigative as it is intuitive.