Through a series of screen prints and a hand-bound, screen printed book and scroll, Daniel Etigson’s Love Your Shadow project explores the theme of the beautiful, protective shadow.
The Toronto-based artist, writer, and printmaker developed this theme through his reading of Sumerian literature, which contains the oldest written word for shadow: gissu. In Sumerian cuneiform, gissu signifies both shadow and protection. The ancient Sumerians lived at the southernmost point of ancient Mesopotamia, a narrow strip of fertile land between two rivers, surrounded by deserts. Entering ancient Sumer meant entering its protective shade.
The project comprises a central series of three black, acrylic screen-prints: Love Your Shadow 1, 2, and 3. These prints depict a female figure embracing her shadow, which becomes progressively more absorbed in her figure. These works began as black ink illustrations, which Daniel created with a brush tip pen and translated into the medium of screen printing.
With a background in literature, Daniel’s work also often contains a literary component. He first began screen printing because he wanted to print hand-bound editions of his illustrated, written works. Thus, the Love Your Shadow project includes a hand-bound, illustrated book and scroll, entitled Love Your Shadow: On the Beautiful Shadow Gissu-du.
When researching the theme of the shadow across multiple cuneiform texts, Daniel noticed that gissu (the Sumerian word for shadow) often occurs in conjunction with “du”; the phrase “gissu-du” is a recurrent motif in Sumerian literature. As du means “pleasant” and “sweet” in Sumerian cuneiform, gissu-du can be translated as “sweet,” “pleasant,” or even perhaps “beautiful shadow.” Inspired by this phrase, Daniel composed an essay on the theme of the beautiful shadow in Sumerian literature. This essay is the central text of the Love Your Shadow: On the Beautiful Shadow Gissu-du book and scroll. Both the scroll and book versions of the work have identical contents, containing the essay and also the Love Your Shadow series of prints and cuneiform graphics (visual representations of cuneiform words and phrases, such as gissu and gissu-du).
Daniel summarises; “I hope the project will allow its viewers to explore the benevolent and beautiful aspects of the shadow. While ancient Greeks and Romans often viewed the shadow as deceptive and illusory—think of Plato’s cave or Narcissus lost in his shadowy reflection—other traditions developed a more positive view of the shadow.” Love Your Shadow provides an entry point into these more positive traditions, as well as visual representations of their rich possibilities.
www.danieletigson.com
@etigson
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