The Shadow Knows

Addis Ababa, 2017. Painter Miriam Zelalem was walking through the Mercato market when a butterfly landed on a cracked mirror in a vendor's stall. She stood still for four minutes watching it — not the butterfly, but the shadow it cast. The shadow had wings that were longer, stranger, more alive than the real thing.

ጥላ (t'ila — shadow) became a five-year obsession. Miriam painted the same butterfly 200 times, always with its shadow slightly wrong — larger, distorted, reaching. This tee carries the final piece from that series, screen-printed in two passes: the butterfly in solid ink, the shadow in a ghost-layer half-tone that shifts under different light.