El "Zahir" is a vector illustration based on the renown Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges story; “El Zahir” from “El Aleph” book of short stories. It is part of the ongoing Elgreen Project "FICCIONES" Series; based on visual allegories to Jorge Luis Borges work and created to inform Elgreen Project universe singular aesthetics.

In this image I wanted to illustrate the ill-fated moment when an unfortunate character falls in to the spell of the Zahir (taking the shape of a strange sundial sculpture in this personal illustrated version) for the first time.

According to Borges, "Zahir" is a person or an object that has the power to create an obsession in everyone who sees it, so that the affected person perceives less and less of reality and more and more of the Zahir, at first only while asleep, then at all times.

In Borges short story, the Zahir takes the shape of a coin; but the history tells that it manifested previously as a tiger, an astrolabe, the bottom of a well, and a vein in a marble column in a mosque. According to the myth, everything on earth has the propensity to be a Zahir, but "the Almighty does not allow more than one thing at a time to be it, since one alone can seduce multitudes."

Through this image I intend to evoque the smell of wet pavement through the allegory of rain, resulting in a tangible scene; depicting a sense of serene melancholy, loneliness and dread, in an unknown and ominous place.

“Others will dream that I am mad, and I [will dream] of the Zahir. When all men on earth think day and night of the Zahir, which one will be a dream and which a reality, the earth or the Zahir?”