Emptying the Void is a book to hold, and to feel held by. In emptying itself of "I", it makes room for love. Its poems offer refuge and revelation — a way to meet fear and embrace fragility. Absence and presence, words and silence: each illuminating the other.
The boundaries between self and other begin to soften, revealing our place within the intricate weave of all that exists. Rather than seeking answers, the book lingers with uncertainty, inviting moments of quiet recognition.
Each poem is a universe unto itself, waiting to be entered, explored, and perhaps carried along. Words share the page with photographs, abstract imagery, asemic writing and silence, meaning emerging as much through absence as through what is spoken.
Even its form asks for intimacy. The exposed spine allows the book to rest open before the reader, inviting them to sit with it as they would with an old friend. Every element, from the materials to the spaces between words, asks to be encountered slowly. It is in this stillness that Emptying the Void quietly reveals itself.
which we seek refuge forwhich we seek refuge fromwhich we seek refuge in
Proposal for a New Lexicondebossed, no inkNo Water No MoonDark MatterPyrrhic Victories
words
blurred
minglingwithwords
layeruponlayer
saltedpaper
saltandpepper
memories
storiesinclenchedfists
wechasedthefuture
Irememberthebubbles
onourfingertips
pop
pop
pop
nowIamleftwithnothing
nothingiseverything
Ihaveitall
allofit
throughthesoapyfilm
bluepinkpurplewhite
pop
pop
frameafterframe
inslowmotion
mystruggleforagoodheart
Iamawayfarer
chasingbubbles
lightfollowing
darkness
followinglight
Istumbleupontherootsofmemories
trapped
inanexileofmycreation
movingwithin
Iremain
trapped
waiting
forthelastbubble
pop
CinderellaDukkhaBalance SheetAbyssWax sealPostponed Poem — loose strips of text in a glassine pocket, for the reader to make their own poem in the empty brackets oppositeA Sojourn
Responses
Naveen Kishore, publisher and poet
A Self drained of strength. Decaying. Abandoned in a landscape of ‘ash’ made ‘love’ made ‘absence’ made ‘exile’. Like the silence that seeks refuge in language and image in poems of loss and what can only be called ‘unbelonging’. Imagine being a refugee in your own void.
Jitish Kallat, artist
Emptying the Void is replete with the productive tension between ink and mark, letter and form, word and image … At the heart of these ‘word-probes’ lies self-inquiry and the perpetual search for meaning and catharsis.
The making
Emptying the Void was born in solitude, during a time when the world had withdrawn into itself. In that quiet, I turned to poetry as a way of meeting fear. What began as a private practice gradually revealed something larger: even in isolation, we remain connected.
The poems were written over two years; the book took another twelve months to make, its form emerging alongside the writing. Every choice grew from what each page asked to become — crumpled butter paper, thread-work, pinholes and punctures, handwritten poems, debossed words, the exposed binding. Material became another language, saying what words alone could not.
The paper mill and its workers, the tree that offered its body, the rain and sunlight that nourished its growth, the many hands that shaped this book — their stories live within the fibres of even the seemingly empty pages.
– Suruchi Choksi
The book laid out on the floor, sequencingOffset printing, Naveen Printers, New DelhiProofing
Readings — Reading Emptying the Void
2025Launched by Soho House, India Art Fair, New Delhi
2025Art & Charlie Gallery, Mumbai
2025Studio Sirohi, Mumbai
2026JoJo Library, Mumbai Gallery Week
Exhibitions
2024–25Conjunctions, Art Exposure, Kolkata
2026Paper & Play, Gallery XXL, New Delhi
Installed, resting open
Acquire
An edition of 300, signed and numbered. Available now, shipped worldwide from Mumbai.
In India — ₹15,000, plus shipping. Available from Trilogy, the curated bookshop and library in Chimbai Koliwada, Bandra.
Elsewhere — USD 250, plus shipping quoted on enquiry. Write to suruchi.choksi@gmail.com with your name and shipping address.
Trade and institutional enquiries — bookshops, museum stores, design libraries and collections are welcome to write for terms and availability: suruchi.choksi@gmail.com
Colophon
Year2024
Edition300, signed and numbered
Dimensions10.5 × 10.5 inches, 208 pages
MaterialsPaper, Gateway paper, thread, wax seal, metallic paper, film
PrintingOffset and screen printing, Naveen Printers, New Delhi
BindingCoptic, exposed spine
ISBN978-93-341-6113-7
PublishedBy the artist
Price₹15,000 in India · USD 250 elsewhere. Shipping additional.
The artist
Suruchi Choksi is a Mumbai-based artist, poet and meditation instructor. Her practice moves between these callings without firm boundaries, with attention serving as both medium and subject across painting, photography, sculpture, poetry and multimedia. She has exhibited widely across India, and her work is held in private and museum collections. She is the author of three books, including the artist's book Emptying the Void.
Artist statement
Driven by awe and a reverence for life, I think of myself as a pilgrim learning to unlearn. Each day reminds me that the magical and the mundane are not separate. Even the ordinary can be alchemised by the way I relate to it.
Working across painting, photography and poetry, I seek forms that hold what is emerging even as something else dissolves. My practice begins with a way of looking: one that meets continual change with curiosity, asks how the tangles that limit us might gently come undone and wonders what becomes possible when we recognise that none of us exists independently. Looking long enough until the boundaries between what is me and what is not me start to feel nebulous.
Making is a continual practice of loosening the stories I tell about who I am, and wondering how my presence might become an act of care.
Conservative and radical, rebellious and reasonable, I remain a well-behaved rascal.
