The Solar Shrine is an Afrofuturistic art installation which makes manifest the cosmology of Ancient Egypt and Nubia. The project references the artistic styles from this area of ancient Africa but with the massing, geometry, and materiality rooted in contemporary times. As a movement, Afrofuturism envisions ‘tomorrow’ by exploring cultural and design aesthetics between the arts, history, science-fiction, and politics from African and African diasporic lens. 

From its early inception, The Solar Shrine was designed as a pop-up structure with an Afrofuturist mission to provide spiritual healing spaces in Chicago’s underprivileged communities. By accepting an artist honorarium grant from Burning Man and resolving the structure to burn, the project team seeks to harness the influence of this underground culture’s capacity to create change agents. Considering its 80k participants, Burning Man poses an opportunity for collaborating artists to create an event with lasting impact and awareness. 
The Solar Shrine, within this handcrafted environment, provides an unparalleled setting to inspire new dialogue across a global audience in appreciation of Classical African culture's vast knowledge and beauty. Through  various forums, events, and exhibitions, we seek to enlighten everyone to value an education in Deep African thought!

The project will burn, evoking a ritual that speaks to us of the vitality of sister and brotherhood and of the healing powers of togetherness. In this we envision an Afrofuturist notion of rebirth; translating us into a collective humanity. Here, we can conceive a new world paradigm that upholds tolerance, connectivity, conversation, and creativity as valued tools of forward movement. 

The magnitude of this convening lies in a widespread dissemination of its happening. We plan to broaden outreach by intentional mediatization through broadcasts outside conventional systems, during and after the event. By innovative archival curation, through conscious selectivity and inclusion of subjectivity, along with empirical records, we can re-create the experience of this moment, creating an online catalog to an archive of memory.
We believe that by connecting to our past, discussing the present, and envisioning bold futures  we can expand the understanding of art and its transformative power. Through this collective understanding we resolve to alert, awaken, and inspire all to seek something more than the ordinary - another possible world. Together, we can disrupt the invisible structures which hold us in place, and build our own life-affirming systems.

By design, significant remnants  from the Solar Shrine shall be redistributed and repurposed  in inner city neighborhoods throughout Chicago, therefore transforming desperate urban environments into activated channels of creativity. This process will empower Afro Futurist agents with the ability to use remnants from the Solar Shrine's Kinetic energy force, to pay homage to the sacred history and current activity of Chicago's Afro Arts legacy!