Missouri: Uniting the Gods and Their Statues: Activating Ancient Egyptian Cosmology

“Uniting the Gods and Their Statues: Activating Ancient Egyptian Cosmology” with Dr. Marques Redd and Mikael Owunna–Co-Founders and Co-Executive Directors of Rainbow Serpent, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit organization advancing Black LGBTQ+ culture through the exploration of multimedia art, traditional African cosmologies, innovative healing protocols, and emerging technologies.

Description: In this talk, multimedia artists Dr. Marques Redd and Mikael Owunna will provide an overview of Myth-Science of the Gatekeepers (2024), their series of 16 life-size glass sculptures of Black queer men cast in the form of a range of ancient Egyptian deities. This project will be contextualized within a number of cultural narratives: the history of glassmaking in ancient Egypt and Pittsburgh, the long tradition of African American and queer engagements with the legacy of ancient Egypt, the complex iconography of ancient Egyptian deities, and the metaphysics of statue making.