8 January 2026

Shade as a medium

In a climate organised around the sun, shade is not absence. It is a material, and it can be composed.

Here, shade is engineered, sought, and prized. It is no surprise that painters treat it as a medium rather than a lack: something to be shaped, weighted, and laid across a surface.

A figure in shade, a wall under a mashrabiya: the subject is the shadow, and the light is only what makes it legible.