PLAY†PREY is a gospel presented as a multi-channel film experience, that recounts a relationship between God, the Church, and a queer Black child. The film, and its accompanying architectural display, explore the playful impulses, innocence, and underlying violence implicated in the experience of queer Black children in the Christian Church. Beginning with an overture to the story of queer Biblical reclamation, this film builds a spiritual narrative that contemplates the structures and rules imposed on pleasure, play, and sexuality under the rigidity of Black Christianity. The narrative takes inspiration from four lyrical sermons in James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombone: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. The film features an original soundtrack in collaboration with KYN (Josh Casey & Yari Bundy) and Vocals from Sandra Lawson-Ndu.

See the exhibition in person at Minnesota Street Project in Gallery 106.