Uniting the Gods & Their Statues: Activating Ancient Egyptian Cosmology, Marques Redd, Mikael Owunna

May 2024 ARCE-Missouri Virtual Lecture with Dr. Marques Redd and Mikael Owunna, entitled "Uniting the Gods and Their Statues: Activating Ancient Egyptian Cosmology." Marques and Mikael are 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.
In this lecture, Marques and Mikael provide an overview of their exhibition 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 is 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.