Saturday August 15, 11am PDT/2pm EST! Join me for an online talk sponsored by The Philosophical Research Society.

“Bringing the Gods Back to Life: Black Queer Cosmologies in Sculpture, Ritual, and Film”

What does it mean to revive ancient Egyptian cosmology as a living, embodied practice centered on Black queer life? In this online class, Dr. Marques Redd shares the vision behind Myth‑Science of the Gatekeepers, a project of the collective Rainbow Serpent (which advances Black LGBTQ culture through emerging tech, multimedia art, and traditional African knowledge systems). The project’s core is a set of sixteen life‑size glass busts of Black queer people, each cast in the form of a reimagined Egyptian deity – Amun, Khonsu, Ra, and others.

These sculptures are potent ritual objects at the heart of a rapidly growing artistic and spiritual universe, inspiring additional works produced by Redd such as (1) Blackstar Sanctuary, a VR film featuring a virtual temple dedicated to the sixteen deities; (2) Opening the Mouth, a live performance, inspired by the ancient Egyptian Opening of the Mouth ritual, designed to ritually enliven the statues; (3) This is the Body of the Sun, an eight‑foot, cast aluminum sculpture of Ra; and (4) May We See Thy Beauties, a forthcoming feature film with fourteen members of the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Redd will situate this work within three interwoven histories: the complex metaphysics of ancient Egyptian artmaking; the African American tradition of engaging ancient Egypt (beginning with the 19th‑century scholar, journalist, and abolitionist Martin Delany); and the long, often overlooked lineage of Black queer artists who have activated Egyptian myth as a source of liberation