Myriads, Only By Dark (unfolded body map, mathematics of droves, indigine, origin)

Myriads, Only by Dark consists of a set of four prints created from etchings. This series is a masterful example of the complex layered abstract compositions by the Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu and her desire to experiment with new printing techniques. This work is a visual representation of what the artist herself calls "auto-ethnography"—a form of systematic inquiry into the effects of history on the formation and perception of one's own identity. The subtitles of the series evoke these questions of migration and identity.

Unlike Julie Mehretu's previous works, Myriads, Only by Dark are vertical formats that incorporate the imprint and physical traces of the artist's body (more precisely, of the hand, present on several canvases), thus approaching the genre of the full-length portrait, albeit in a more spectral manner, indexing the artist's body here and there. The artist is certainly looking here to the Body Prints (1968–), a series of canvases in which the African American artist David Hammons, whom Mehretu often cites among her essential references, uses his own body coated in margarine or oil as a tool to make imprints of his own body on the canvas. The first print, on the left, subtitled "unfolded body map," hints at a negative human silhouette in the center of the canvas, while the subsequent prints depict the progressive expansion and contraction of a breakthrough of bright light, which on the last print to the right takes the form of an iridescent diamond.