Iris Project Gallery

On View: November 6, 2021 – December 19, 2021

Reconstructing the Primordial House is a multimedia installation by Rainbow Serpent that draws on West African creation myths from Dogon and Igbo historical contexts to present a mythical reconstruction of Obi Mbu, the Primordial House of Igbo cosmology, which is a symbol of the Primordial Androgynous Blackness of space in its original pure state of monolithic harmony.

Adorning the walls of the Iris Project Gallery are ten images from Mikael Owunna’s photographic series Infinite Essence, for which the artist leveraged his training as an engineer to build a camera flash that only transmits ultraviolet light. Owunna meticulously hand-paints the nude bodies of Black models with fluorescent paints that only glow under ultraviolet light and photographs them in total darkness. For the fraction of a second that his shutter snaps, a transfiguration happens: the Black body is illuminated as the starry universe itself. Owunna places these glowing bodies into tableaux from the archive of African diasporic myth and prints these images on aluminum sheets. The metal substrate connects the work to a deep history of African smithing traditions embodied in figures like the Igbo bronze casters of Igbo-Ukwu and Demme Na, the mythical Dogon smiths that descended from the heavens. These ten metal works frame the external boundary of the revived Primordial House.

Also on display with the exhibition was the Rainbow Serpent film Obi Mbu (The Primordial House) (co-directed by Mikael Owunna and Marques Redd). This work is a 30-minute experimental dance film that is centered in the Primordial House, located in the Sirius star system, from which creation emerges. Eke-Nnechukwu, the Igbo high god, and Chukwu, Her masculine counterpart, exist in perfect unity in and as the Blackness of space. Although They are dual aspects of the Primordial Androgynous deity, Chukwu sections off a part of space exclusively for Himself in the form of a sacred pillared chamber in the heart of the Primordial House. He engages in a secret work by dancing in and out of this chamber, which sets off a chain of irrevocable circumstances that lead to our current world and condition. 

Invoking a return to our original monolithic state, this installation is a nuanced call for the revival of traditional African knowledge systems.