Bio

Mikael Owunna is a Nigerian American multimedia artist, filmmaker, engineer, and the President of the City of Pittsburgh's Public Art and Civic Design Commission. He is also the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Rainbow Serpent, a Black LGBTQ art | tech | spirituality organization. Owunna's artistic work spans from creative media including photography, installation, video art, performance art, sculpture, and architectural light design, to new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), NFTs, and blockchain. Exploring the intersections of technology, art, and African cosmologies, his work seeks to elucidate an emancipatory vision of possibility that revives traditional African knowledge systems and pushes people beyond all boundaries, restrictions, and frontiers. 

Owunna’s work has been exhibited across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America and has been collected and showcased by institutions such as Fotografiska Stockholm; Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History & Culture; MIT Media Lab; Art Dubai; Digital Art Fair Asia; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and North Carolina Museum of Art. His work has also been featured in media ranging from the New York Times to CNN, NPR, VICE, The Guardian, and BOMB Magazine. He has lectured at venues including Harvard Law School, World Press Photo (Netherlands), and TEDx. Owunna has published two monographs: Limitless Africans (FotoEvidence, 2019) and Cosmologies (ClampArt, 2021). Owunna’s multimedia practice includes film and live performance, in 2021 he directed the dance film Obi Mbu (The Primordial House) with Marques Redd, and in 2023 he premiered the multimedia live performance The Four World Ages with the Rainbow Serpent Collective. He has also released Myth-Science of the Gatekeepers (2024), a series of 16 glass sculptures of Black queer ancient Egyptian deities; Blackstar Sanctuary (2024), an immersive VR film that explores an expansive temple complex dedicated to those deities; Opening the Mouth (2024), a site-specific dance performance ritually animating the Myth-Science statues; and The Three Sisters (2024) an architectural light installation which fused Pittsburgh's Sister Bridges with African and indigenous traditions. Owunna's work has been commissioned for major public art installations by organizations including the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Allegheny County, Cleveland Foundation, Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, Pittsburgh International Airport, and Orange Barrel Media.

Owunna is fluent in English and French and speaks basic Mandarin Chinese and Igbo.

Image by Ajamu X

Contact

For more information on Mikael's work and for any work or media inquiries, please get in touch.