Praise House: We All Shine reimagines a modest antebellum structure—the praise house—that offered shelter and privacy for prayer, plotting, and celebration for enslaved people in the United States. McDonald refigures this vernacular typology as a utopian space of healing, inspiration, and creativity. Intended to be built at full-scale in a Chicago neighborhood, the two-way mirror structure will reflect the neighborhood and people that live there during the daytime and at night, emit light, sound, movement, and imagery projected from the interior.

Here, Praise House is realized as a scale model and includes two projected films: a US government public service announcement circa 1960, The New Girl in the Office, that attempts to address racial integration of the workplace, juxtaposed with Summer Madness, a film by McDonald that features people dancing at Chicago dance parties and clubs.
Praise House: We All Shine functions as public art; a community gathering space and an installation space for community artists, makers, and curators.

This scale-model of Praise House was commissioned for CAB 5: This is a Rehearsal curated by the
Floating Museum.

This presentation of Praise House is supported by the Graham Foundation.
The CAB Studio program is generously supported in part by The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.