The Beams That Flood With Light
Photography
The Beams That Flood With Light is a forthcoming photography series by Rainbow Serpent Co-Founders Mikael Owunna and Marques Redd. Created alongside their performance film May We See Thy Beauties, the series follows the making and ritual activation of This Is The Body Of The Sun, an 8-foot cast aluminum sculpture of the Kemetic solar deity Ra. Working across thermal, infrared, and visible-light photography, the project explores how different technologies of vision reveal different dimensions of reality, transforming photography into an act of ritual witnessing rather than documentation.
The title is drawn from the sacred inscription engraved on the sculpture: “The gods are rejoicing when they see Ra in his rising; his beams flood with light the countries.” In Kemetic cosmology, the rising of Ra was not simply a daily astronomical event but a continual act of creation in which light overcame darkness and divine order was renewed. The Beams That Flood With Light extends this solar theology into contemporary photography, treating the camera as an instrument capable of receiving, refracting, and transmitting that radiance. Each image becomes a meditation on light as both physical phenomenon and spiritual force: illumination as revelation, healing, transformation, and ecstatic presence.
Photographed across sites including UAP Foundry, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh’s rivers and bridges, and the public activation of the sculpture itself, the series traces the work’s journey from molten aluminum to monumental public artwork. Thermal imaging reveals the hidden heat of metal, bodies, and touch during the sculpture’s fabrication, while infrared photography transforms rivers, architecture, and ritual performance into unfamiliar landscapes of luminous energy. Rather than treating these technologies as scientific or industrial instruments alone, the project reclaims them as spiritual tools, using expanded optical systems to visualize forms of presence that remain invisible to ordinary sight.
In doing so, The Beams That Flood With Light reimagines photography itself. Historically associated with documentation and representation, the medium becomes a practice of cosmological inquiry. The series proposes that no single mode of vision exhausts reality. Thermal, infrared, and visible light each disclose different worlds, inviting viewers to move beyond the limits of ordinary perception and encounter Black queer bodies, African cosmologies, industrial landscapes, and public monuments as fields of radiant transformation. Through this convergence of ancient solar theology, expanded photographic vision, and contemporary public art, the series proposes a new visual language in which industrial fire, scientific optics, and divine radiance become inseparable, inviting viewers to witness the continual emergence of a world flooded with light.