Butterfly Williams
True Colors: Illuminating Pharaoh Tarot, 2021

video
47 minutes

ARTWORK STATEMENT:

True Colors delivers step-by-step messages for your life journey at the crossroads of contemporary art, multicultural consciousness and African Diasporic spiritualities. Reflecting the influences of Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, YouTube, and the MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, this psychoactive video offers the viewer a tarot reading that transforms the mosaic staircases of San Francisco into portals of ancestral empowerment. Let your spirit rise like a phoenix as you resonate with the indigenous mysticism and ancient wisdom of Pharaoh Tarot. Ashe!

Artist Bio:

Butterfly Williams, MFA, PhD, is the director of Iruke Institute International, a center for arts-based research into African Diasporic spiritualities. Based at Pacific Felt Factory in San Francisco, Dr. Butterfly is a civic shaman and social alchemist who usually works in performance and video, often in collaboration with LGBTQ communities of color. A recent graduate of Saybrook University, his doctoral dissertation is titled Just For Us: Men of African Descent Decolonize Same-Sex Desire Through Arts-Based Alchemy. Please visit Iruke.org for more information.