God Is/Sustenance: A Multimedia Installation

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God/Is Sustenance is a multimedia performance and sculptural installation that celebrates and educates its audience on being stewards of the earth. The performance of God Is takes inspiration from African masquerade and devotional worship to honor personal divinity. Sustenance carries that practice outward through a series of site-specific installations, asking how that devotion can extend beyond the self and into the world. 

About This Project

God/Is Sustenance is a multimedia performance and sculptural installation informed by African cosmology, symbology, and ritual. While creating the first Tarot deck illustrated and written by a Black woman “Dust II Onyx”, visual artist Courtney Alexander deeply researched spiritual traditions from across the African Diaspora. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in Comparative Mythology at Santa Clara University, Regina/Pharaoh began reading tarot with “Dust II Onyx” in 2019. A student of Rosicrucian (Egyptian/Hermetic) metaphysics and philosophy since age 17, Pharaoh is also a certified Reiki practitioner. Courtney and Pharoh’s potent connection to the divine motivates their land stewardship and activism.  Through God Is/Sustenance we invite you to cultivate a relationship with the divine in self, and nature. 

God Is is a live interactive altar experience by Courtney Alexander. Courtney sits draped anonymously and decadently upon a throne or sculpture in a Black handmade costume inspired by African masquerade ceremony. Audience members are invited to come together for God Is/Sustenance and create an offering from the selection of ritual items and sit in meditation with Courtney, contemplating the nature of God as represented in front of them.  
 
While God Is incorporates land honoring in its performance, the sister performance Sustenance in collaboration with artist Pharaoh is a multistage land pilgrimage designed to encourage connection to the earth, unique to the land where it is created. Prompts invite audience members toward contemplation of the divine and the land on which they stand. It is important to us that we include all four elements and five senses, so we hope to engage in meditation, prayers, poetry, music, and movement.  

Courtney and Pharaoh are both Chicago-based artists creating this work through an arts residency in Bombay Beach, California. We are fundraising to fully realize this project in Bombay Beach, after which we will seek a venue and local collaborations to bring a version of God Is/Sustenance to Chicago. Our residency in Bombay Beach supports us with time, housing, exposure, and a robust community of creators and technicians.

Our residency in Bombay Beach supports us with time, housing, exposure, and a robust community of creators and technicians. It does not provide us with ANY monetary funding. We are committed to bringing the project to life in the space and time we have, using our own resources.

Your support is vital, and will go towards key production elements that allow us to develop the work as it travels to Chicago and beyond. Contributions directly sustain the foundational materials, documentation, and infrastructure such as projectors, the masquerade regalia speakers, Sustenance land markers, and event capture.

Your gift will allow us to secure a venue, acquire sculptural materials and supplies for a site-specific installation of Sustenance, and compensate local stewards for their knowledge and contributions to the work among many other things. 

To support God Is/Sustenance is to support humankind reconnecting to the earth and building a better society from that relationship. Help us reconnect you to our divinity. Ase. 

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $10
  Thank You + Guided Land Meditation (Digital Link) ($10.00 is tax deductible.)
• $25
  Art Print (Post Card) ($20.00 is tax deductible.)
• $50
  5 x 8.25" Sigil Notebook ($32.00 is tax deductible.)
• $100
  Sigil Scarf (Convertible Tote) ($65.00 is tax deductible.)
• $250
  Land Ritual Kit (libation bottle, notebook, PDF ritual guide, meditation) ($170.00 is tax deductible.)
• $500
  Private Reading with Regina or Courtney (60–75 min) ($380.00 is tax deductible.)
• $800
  All the Above plus acknowledgement as Steward of Sustenance ($542.00 is tax deductible.)

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Regina Victor

Make a Wave Artist

Pharaoh (they/them)  is a multidisciplinary artist and intuitive healer originating from Oakland, CA, currently based in Chicago IL. Pharaoh serves as a member of the Organizing Team for the Bombay Beach Biennale, and is a steward of  ‘The Poetry House’ …

View Regina Victor's profile

• 2 updates
• 15 supporters

• Update 1: Hello from Bombay!

  Posted on March 06, 2026

  

   

  Thank you to everyone who has supported the campaign so far. We’re deeply grateful. Every bit of support and sharing helps carry this work forward.

  Since arriving in Bombay Beach, our first week has been spent settling into the landscape and learning more about the history of the Salton Sea and the Cahuilla, the original stewards of this land. Part of the intention of Sustenance is entering into relationship with place, and that means taking time to listen. To understand the stories already living here before we add anything of our own.

  Much of our time has been spent walking the area, gathering materials from the land, and allowing the environment itself to guide how the markers and stations might take shape. Along the way we’ve also been visiting other memorials and land based works in the region that honor history and place. Seeing how others have marked memory in the landscape has been quietly inspiring and continues to inform how we think about presence, offering, and care.

  During this process we also learned that a grant connected to this event was unfortunately not awarded, which means we are continuing to move the work forward out of pocket for now. Even with that news, we remain committed to building what we can with the time and resources available to us here.

  The support we are raising through this campaign will help us secure some of the core materials and equipment needed to bring these early installations to life. Many of these materials will also travel with the project and be used when the work returns to Chicago, where the next major phase of the project will unfold.

  In many ways, being here is allowing us to prototype and refine the process. We are gathering materials, experimenting with form, and beginning to understand what these stations can become. Each place this project lives will ask for its own relationship with the land and community, and this time in Bombay Beach is helping us shape the language of the work as it continues to grow.

  Thank you again to everyone who has donated, shared, and offered encouragement. It truly means a lot to us to feel people walking alongside this process.

   

  In the meantime, please continue to donate and share! We are working to build this project into something special. We appreciate your support <3

  Update 2: Collecting Obsidian for Our Station

  Posted on March 11, 2026

  

   

  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0kFhiOt8qVo?si=kpk4J_ZeMHGMlSq5

  Over the past few days we have been spending time moving slowly across the land here in Bombay Beach, listening, observing, and letting the environment guide what wants to emerge through the work.

  One of the most special moments so far was visiting a natural deposit of obsidian not far from where we are staying. The landscape was covered in it. Mounds of deep black glass catching the light of the desert sun. We spent the day walking, collecting pieces, and speaking with the land about how these materials might want to participate in the installation we are building.

  Obsidian carries a long and fascinating history. It forms when volcanic lava cools so quickly that it becomes glass instead of crystal. Because of its razor sharp edges it has been used for thousands of years as a tool for cutting, carving, and crafting. Many cultures have also used obsidian in spiritual practice. Polished obsidian mirrors have long been used for scrying and divination, reflecting both the outer world and the unseen currents beneath it.

  As we continue learning about the land and the people who have lived in relationship with it, we have also been reading about the stories of the Cahuilla. Within their lore is Menily, a moon being whose presence connects the rhythms of the sky with life on earth. Discovering this obsidian field while thinking about a moon centered station for the installation felt like a meaningful convergence.

  The pieces we gathered will likely become part of a station associated with protection and the moon. A place where visitors can pause, reflect, and enter into quiet conversation with the materials themselves.

  Moments like this remind us that the work is not something we simply place onto the land. It grows through relationship with what is already here. Through listening, gathering, and allowing the materials and stories of this place to shape the experience we are creating.

• Thank you to the following for contributing to 3Arts with the recommendation that we support this project.

  • Sylvia Hall

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Gideon Lazarus

  • Alex Pahl Skinner

  • cristal sabbagh

  • Kara Tobin

  • Taylor Sweet

  • Janenne Willis

  • Kona Morris

  • Ken Savage

  • KATURAH BRYANT

  • Ahmad Muwwakkil

  • Angela Anderson

  • Norita Collins

  • Janet Johnson

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