The title of this poster, “Darkness isn’t absence, it’s a fertile space of possibility”, made me think of Kandinsky’s 1935 essay on the empty canvas: “The empty canvas is apparently statically empty, full of silence, indifferent. Almost dejected. But in reality, full of tension with a thousand floating sounds […]. It can do anything.”
Emptiness and darkness trigger existential anxiety and fear of the unknown, of loneliness, or of becoming lost, but neither darkness nor an empty canvas hold ‘nothingness’. Seeds grow in the darkness of the soil; caterpillars become butterflies by disintegration and transformation within the limited space of their cocoon. On an empty canvas we are not bound to the past: we can sketch out a messy experiment or create a masterpiece; narrate a tragedy or a comedy. What if darkness and the empty canvas are an invitation to dream, to incubate ideas, to create new forms of life?
When we can’t see what’s ahead, it means nothing has been set in stone yet. What if darkness and emptiness contain every choice we have yet to make? What if we shift from the fear of the beginning to curiosity, joy, and a sense of unlimited potential nurtured by the darkness and the void? Just and prosperous futures – and presences – are not something we will find along the way waiting for us, once time comes. We are their authors. What if having ‘nothing’ is actually having everything? What if when on the threshold of a new beginning in whatever sector, we are not starting from a place of lack but from a place of pure potential?