‘Drinking, Drowning: Summer 2024’

Ink and pencil on paper, 17 x 12 inches 

‘Drinking, Drowning: Summer 2024’ is a series of graphic art loosely connected by a shared theme of water.

Water is the essence of life. It is the material of our bodies, the source of our continuous survival, yet it may also prove treacherous and fatal.

‘Drinking, Drowning’ is about spillage. It’s about the people we try to hold onto in vain—how they spill, dribbling, through our fingers. It’s about emotions that cannot be contained, no matter how we try to bottle them, to rein them in. Be it love or longing, this sadness trickles and seeps into all that we are until we cannot tell when we end and they begin.

‘Drinking, Drowning’ is concerned with the water in our glasses, in our puddles, in our ponds. It is concerned with rainwater, oceans, running taps, droplets running down the rim of a mug and dew condensed against glass. Water is inescapable. It is everywhere. It is the lover we cannot escape.

These graphics are dedicated to the people who seem—to us—like bubbles, lithe, dancing towards the surface even as we sink deeper into our darkness: how we envy their vivacity, their beauty, their freedom, and how we loathe them for not staying behind to keep us alive. These graphics are dedicated the people we love, the people we need like we need water—and how much it hurts, to live without them.  

Cici Zhang

Full piece below.