empty chairs

Photographed from inside a café on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in West Iceland, Empty Chairs captures the quiet contrast between inner warmth and outer stillness.

From inside, there is shelter, vibrancy and the comfort of being warmed after the cold. Outside, the day appears bright and sunlit, though the air is icy beyond the glass. The empty chairs sit in silence, holding the echo of people, conversations and moments that have passed.

This artwork carries a tender emotional weight. Its Bhāva is emptiness, absence and the quiet ache of what once was. Yet within that absence is also space — space for remembrance, for healing, for transition, for the next chapter to arrive.

Through Tahl’s lens, the empty chair becomes a symbol of both loss and readiness. It asks us to sit with what is no longer there, without forgetting the fullness that remains within us.

Its musing draws from Rumi: do not feel lonely; the entire universe is inside you.

In the home, this piece brings a poetic stillness. It is contemplative, intimate and deeply human — a work for spaces that hold memory, softness and reflection.