Rukaiah El

I am a senior Fine Arts major at the Fashion Institute of Technology, minoring in Art History and African-American & Africana Studies. I am seeking a Summer 2023 Internship, participating in FIT’s College Credited Internship Program and am interested in exhibition and gallery management, exhibition and gallery curation, and art therapy.

I consider my work personal and self-reflective, incorporating many of my intersectional identities. My priorities are painting, and I have an attachment to printmaking. However, I love working with all mediums, from sculpting to drawing, which is why I chose Fine Arts as my major.

For painting I specialize in oil and acrylic. I tend to primarily use vine charcoal and chalk pastels when drawing. My sculpture Gilded Dread (2022) exemplifies my knowledge of wire armatures and plaster gauze as sculpture mediums, as well as my tendency to use my Black and female intersectional identities as inspiration for my works.

I have curated two exhibitions during my time at the Fashion Institute of Technology, both in collaboration with the Black Student Union at FIT, and open to the public.

I am currently pursuing a BFA in Fine Arts at the Fashion Institute of Technology with minors in Art History and African American & Africana Studies.