“…I’m Falling into the Sky…”

This drawing is inspired by the Mahayana Buddhist concept of sunyata (emptiness), explored by the philosopher Nishitani Keiji as a means of overcoming existential crisis and nihilism. The drawing focuses on the strangeness of emptying ourselves of an essential sense of selfhood and the morbidity of this idea from a Western perspective, yet the salvific interpretation of this from a non-Western framework. The title is taken from H.P Lovecraft’s short story, ‘The Other Gods’, which embodies a fear of emptiness as an existential horror, whilst also grappling with a strange cosmic bliss that could occur from its embrace.