Kifarg

This is a piece I made for my Printmaking class in 2018. The assignment was to to paraphrase, or make own versions of famous works of art. I chose to remake the figures on the colossal Ishtar Gates of Babylon (present day Iraq, though the walls and gates are currently reproduced at the Pergamon museum in Berlin).

There are three animals or beast-like creatures depicted on the walls: A lion with wings, representing Ishtar, the goddess of love, magic and war; a dragon/gryphon-like creature with horns, representing the king of the gods Marduk; and a bull symbolizing Adad, the god of lightning. Learning about the symbolism made me realize that I was seeing similarities between the mythology of the ancient Babylonians and the Norse mythology I was accustomed to, which opened the flood gates to an understanding of just how many religions have shared inspirations.

So I decided to appropriate the creatures into something that would fit more with the culture I grew up in. The dragon got moose-like horns and the lion was changed to a lynx. The bull became and aurochs, which I thought would better convey the strength and relentlessness associated with lightning and thunder.

I thought it’d be fun to give the aurochs some thunderclouds and lightning, but then I realized I had to do something similar for the other two figures. I really shot myself in the foot, since the attributes of those gods were way more abstract, but I think I succeeded. The strange silhouettes surrounding the dragon is the ancient monster Marduk split and the created the world from, another concept that’s reoccured through several mythologies.