Biography
Marques Redd is a traditional African cosmologist, independent scholar, multimedia artist, and co-founder of Rainbow Serpent, Inc., a Black LGBTQ arts nonprofit organization. The foundation of his work is the reclamation, modernization, and extension of traditional African knowledge systems, particularly from ancient Egyptian and West African (Yoruba, Dogon, Dagara, and Igbo) contexts, and he seeks every medium he can – film, sculpture, academic scholarship, spiritual retreats, performance, and public installation – to bring the multidimensional depths of African cosmologies to the 21st century world.
He specifically strives to revive the traditions of gatekeepers, a lineage of queer African spirit workers, artisans, and diviners. Because queer people can vibrate masculine and feminine energy, it was believed in many indigenous African perspectives that we preserve a special connection to the Creator, the Primordial Androgynous Blackness from which all life emerges, and as such are tasked with maintaining the “gates,” the high vibrational points connecting the physical to the spiritual world. He takes this ancient mandate seriously and endeavors to create work that ritually elevates those who engage with it.
Redd graduated from Harvard University with an AB in African and Afro-American Studies and Social Studies and from the University of California, Berkeley with a PhD in English Literature. He has written essays on a wide variety of topics, including the poetry of jazz musician Sun Ra, the novels of Ishmael Reed, the art of the Women of Visions collective, and global 19th-century poetry. His forthcoming book is a scholarly text entitled Ancient Origins, Future Destinies: Blackness, the Word, and World Creativity that explores connections between the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, the Odu Ifa, Dogon myth, and contemporary African American writers such as Jay Wright.
With his collaborator Mikael Owunna, he has released several artistic projects. They co-directed Obi Mbu (The Primordial House), a 30-minute film which presents a choreographed dance performance exploring the movement of illuminated Black dancers as they reenact an Igbo myth of creation. Playing the Cosmic Strings is their public art collaboration with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra centered around the unveiling of a 1,200 sq. ft. billboard influenced by Igbo conceptualizations about the origin of music. As artists-in-residence at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, they are working on a series of sculptures of ancient Egyptian deities.
In partnership with the Esalen Institute, Redd is ecstatic to provide multi-day workshops (such as Harnessing the Power of Creation through African Ritual) to share his spiritual practice with a broad audience. He has spent over twenty years studying, practicing, and drawing inspiration from many Afro-diasporic sacred sciences, and he looks forward to sharing their wisdom with you.
Image by Ajamu X