High Priestess of the Intergalactic Federation, Special Envoy to Mars was featured as a hologram in my first monograph AFRIFUTURI 02022020, and as a video Holographic High Priestess for 2020 virtual exhibitions including Virtual Burning Man Afrofutures Solar Shrine, PS1/Center for Afrofuturist Studies (Sept. 18-19 Autumn Equinox Art-a-Thon; Sat. 9/18 @8 p.m. & Sun. 9/19 @8 a.m.), and Brave New Mesh curated by Comm-Post (based in Veracruz, Mexico; interactive VR through November). The hologram as part of AFRIFUTURI 02022020 is featured in Kavi Gupta Editions Black Voices Initiative launching September 26, 2020.
Originally commissioned by then-NASA/Blumberg Chair of Astrobiology Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz, for Becoming Interplanetary/Decolonizing Mars Symposium at the U.S. Library of Congress, High Priestess of the Intergalactic Federation, Special Envoy to Mars is a multi-media audience-interactive poetic riff traversing time, space, and altered dimensions. Wearing garments and a headdress inspired by depictions of Califia – the fictional Black warrior queen after whom California is named – Duyst-Akpem considers what it means to be human, to reach for the stars, to become interplanetary. Photo in U.S. Library of Congress hallway by M. Cem Mengüç. Portrait by Hilary Higgins. Hologram in collaboration with C Alex Clark.
High Priestess of the Intergalactic Federation, Special Envoy to Mars, Decolonizing Mars/Becoming Interplanetary, NASA, Library of Congress, Kluge Center, Washington, DC, 2018