MISSION

Building New Worlds Through Art, Cosmology, and Cultural Infrastructure

Rainbow Serpent is a visionary cultural institution creating new forms of artistic, intellectual, and spiritual life through Black queer worldbuilding, African diasporic cosmologies, technological experimentation, and transdisciplinary art. Working across sculpture, photography, film, performance, publishing, music, immersive media, architecture, emerging technologies, and ritual practice, we cultivate cultural ecosystems that imagine new possibilities for how people create, gather, remember, heal, and flourish.

Our projects unfold across local communities and international networks, linking place-based cultural practice with global artistic exchange. Through collaborations with artists, scholars, technologists, traditional knowledge keepers, and cultural institutions around the world, Rainbow Serpent cultivates relationships that strengthen regional cultural life while contributing to international artistic dialogue.

Rather than treating artistic disciplines as separate fields, Rainbow Serpent approaches culture as an interconnected practice of worldbuilding. Every project – from a public monument or immersive film to a book, performance, artist residency, or ritual gathering – contributes to a larger cosmological vision that bridges ancient knowledge systems with contemporary artistic practice. Furthermore, our projects connect artistic production with research, education, public engagement, and long-term institution building.

Our work is grounded in Black queer experience while engaging audiences across cultures and geographies. We seek to build enduring cultural infrastructure that cultivates artistic ecosystems, expands public imagination, preserves cultural memory, and contributes to more expansive visions of human possibility.

What We Are Building

Rainbow Serpent develops interconnected cultural infrastructure that supports artistic production, intellectual exchange, technological experimentation, and long-term institutional growth. Rather than organizing around a single artistic discipline, we cultivate an ecosystem in which artworks, ideas, technologies, performances, publications, and communities reinforce one another across generations.

Artistic Production

We create ambitious works across sculpture, photography, film, performance, music, architectural lighting, publishing, immersive media, and emerging technologies. Our projects reinterpret African diasporic cosmologies through contemporary artistic practice, generating new symbolic languages that expand public imagination and invite new ways of seeing the world.

Knowledge & Publishing

Through books, essays, anthologies, archival projects, and forthcoming publishing initiatives, we cultivate new conversations about art, philosophy, spirituality, technology, and culture. Publishing serves as a means of preserving cultural memory while advancing new intellectual traditions and supporting writers, artists, and scholars working across disciplines.

Technology & Emerging Media

Technology is one of Rainbow Serpent’s artistic languages. We investigate how emerging media, computational systems, scientific imaging, immersive environments, artificial intelligence, architectural lighting, extended reality (XR), thermal and infrared imaging, and digital fabrication can expand perception, preserve cultural memory, and generate new symbolic worlds. Rather than treating technology as an end in itself, we approach it as a creative and spiritual medium capable of reshaping how people experience history, identity, ritual, and collective imagination.

Artist Development & Mentorship

Rainbow Serpent commissions new work, hosts artist residencies, mentors emerging practitioners, and creates interdisciplinary opportunities for artists to collaborate across media. We believe artists are architects of cultural futures, and our goal is to support artists in building enduring artistic practices, intellectual traditions, and cultural institutions.

Convening & Exchange

We bring together artists, scholars, technologists, traditional knowledge keepers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, writers, architects, designers, and communities through exhibitions, performances, reading groups, workshops, festivals, symposia, and international exchanges. These gatherings cultivate relationships that extend beyond individual projects and contribute to enduring artistic and intellectual movements.

Ritual Practice & Sacred Infrastructure

Rainbow Serpent investigates the relationship between artistic practice, healing, ritual, spirituality, and the built environment. Drawing from African cosmologies alongside contemporary artistic experimentation, we develop spaces and experiences that foster reflection, transformation, and collective renewal.  

Our Institution

Rainbow Serpent is developing an interconnected institutional ecosystem that includes artistic production, publishing, artist development, research, technological experimentation, public convening, and cultural infrastructure. Together these initiatives strengthen one another while supporting artists, scholars, technologists, ritual practitioners, and communities over the long term.

Our work functions as:

  • a cultural infrastructure builder;

  • a Black queer intellectual ecosystem;

  • a transdisciplinary production studio;

  • a residency and mentorship platform;

  • a commissioning institution;

  • a publishing and research center;

  • a convening space for interdisciplinary exchange;

  • a laboratory for spiritual technologies;

  • a transmedia archive of Black queer cultural memory;

  • an interdisciplinary training environment for artists and cultural workers;

  • and a home for artists imagining new cultural futures.

Rather than simply participating in existing artistic systems, Rainbow Serpent seeks to cultivate institutional worldbuilding, which we understand as the creation of the artistic, intellectual, technological, and organizational structures that allow cultural movements to flourish across generations.