Sofia LECONTE-MITEV

             Painter

Passers-by gallery

The passers-by and shadows

A human shadow thrown is an integral part of self, revealing clues to personality while at the same time masking identity.

- The shadow is the very image of ephemeral, unreal and changing things.

- Buddhism: the magical action of a human shadow and the Indonesian shadow theatre open up certain prospects, the shadow appearing in these cases to be imbued with all the subtle essence of beings.

- The Indians of Northern Canada: on death, the shadow and the soul part company from the body. The shadow remains near the grave and maintains a relationship with the living. The soul is able to return and reunite with the shadow to create a new being.

- In a large number of South American Indian languages, the same word means shadow, soul or image.

- For the Yakoutes, the shadow is one of the three souls of a person; it is respected and children are not allowed to play with it; Toungoos avoid walking on the shadow of another person.

- Any shape determines the limits of a being; it is merely a projected shadow which comes from a superior light, which it both obscures and reveals.

- A Jungian analysis describes a shadow as something that the subject refuses to acknowledge or admit and which nevertheless imposes itself on the subject, directly or indirectly, for example the lower character traits or other incompatible tendencies.