Marques Redd

Marques Redd is a traditional African cosmologist, independent scholar, multimedia artist, and Co-Founder of Rainbow Serpent, a Black LGBTQ art | tech | spirituality collective. His creative practice centers on reviving and modernizing indigenous African knowledge systems—particularly those from ancient Egypt and West African traditions like the Yoruba, Dogon, Dagara, and Igbo—and translating them into contemporary artistic forms that engage public space and cultural memory.

Redd works across media including architectural light installation, public art, photography, film, sculpture, music, and text-based art. His large-scale public works include “The Three Sisters” (2024), an architectural lighting installation commissioned by Allegheny County and displayed on Pittsburgh’s iconic Warhol, Clemente, and Carson bridges, and “Playing the Cosmic Strings” (2021), a public art collaboration with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to produce a 1,200-square-foot billboard.

He co-directed “Obi Mbu (The Primordial House)” (2021), an acclaimed dance film and photography series exploring Igbo creation mythology, and has created works like “Myth-Science of the Gatekeepers” (2024), a series of 16 glass sculptures of Black queer Egyptian deities, and “Blackstar Sanctuary” (2024), an immersive virtual reality film exploring a sacred temple space. His project “The Four World Ages” (2023) spans performance, photography, spatial augmented reality, and public installation to visualize the cosmological arc of human history.

Redd regularly leads spiritual workshops at institutions like the Esalen Institute and curates exhibitions nationwide. His work activates contemporary public art as a living site for ancestral knowledge, ritual power, and community empowerment.

Photo by Ajamu X