Sail the Road of Heaven / Coming and Going
Architectural Light Design
Sail the Road of Heaven and Coming and Going are two forthcoming permanent architectural light installations by Rainbow Serpent Co-Founders Mikael Owunna and Marques Redd, created in collaboration with lighting design partner SPRK, for the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Drawing together Kemetic funerary texts, August Wilson’s dramatic universe, and contemporary programmable architectural lighting, the installations transform the Center’s iconic sail into a living vessel of memory, ritual, and spiritual passage. Each work unfolds as a ten-minute ceremonial sequence in which the architecture itself becomes an active participant in Wilson’s metaphysical world.
Sail the Road of Heaven
Inspired by Gem of the Ocean
Taking its title from the Pyramid Texts, where the deceased is invited to “sail the road of heaven” aboard the solar barque of Ra, this installation transforms the AWAACC into the Gem of the Ocean itself: a vessel carrying ancestral memory across earthly and celestial waters.
The work is grounded in Aunt Ester’s vision of the City of Bones, where she tells Citizen Barlow: “That’s the center of the world. In time it will all come to light. The people made a kingdom out of nothing...They got a burning tongue, Mr. Citizen. Their mouths are on fire with song. That water can’t put it out...The only thing that can guide you is the stars.”
Across four ritual movements, the sail becomes an instrument of spiritual navigation:
Setting Sail — Waters of memory and the Middle Passage begin to move.
Tongues of Fire — Ancestral voices rise in radiant waves of gold and crimson.
The City of Bones — Memory assembles into a luminous ancestral city.
Star Path — Constellations emerge to guide souls toward healing, remembrance, and liberation.
Coming and Going
Inspired by Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Drawing upon Spell 68 of the Kemetic Book of the Dead, in which the deceased gains the power to “come and go by day” between worlds, this installation reimagines Wilson’s play as a ritual of spiritual transformation. Here, “coming and going” becomes a cosmic principle: the movement between bondage and freedom, death and rebirth, forgetting and remembrance.
The installation is anchored by two of Wilson’s most visionary passages. In the first, Bynum Walker recalls his encounter with the Shiny Man: “He had this light coming out of him...He shined until all the light seemed like it seeped out of him and then he was gone...My daddy told me he was gonna show me how to find my song.”
In the second, Herald Loomis recounts his mystical vision: “I done seen bones rise up out the water...The wind’s blowing the breath into my body...I’m gonna stand up...I got to stand up.”
The ritual unfolds in six movements:
Invocation — The first spirit steps appear upon the Ghost Road.
Blood and the Cleansing — Ritual anointing and purification begin.
The Shiny Man — A burst of divine radiance reveals the one who shows the way.
Bones Walking — Breath returns to the ancestors as they rise from the waters.
Standing — The scattered self is made whole; the soul stands in its own power.
Silence — The light recedes into stillness as the immortal soul comes and goes once more.
Together, Sail the Road of Heaven and Coming and Going establish a new form of public ritual through architecture. Reinterpreting Wilson’s dramas through African cosmological traditions, the installations invite viewers to experience the August Wilson African American Cultural Center as a luminous site of remembrance, transformation, and collective imagination.