71Fence VIII (2018)

Nilani Joseph (b. 1990)

Pen on paper

Collection the artist

First published: Brick Literary Magazine, Issue 102, Toronto, Canada, 2018

Nilani Joseph’s drawings feature barbed wire pylons, cement sacks, flattened tar barrels, dried palmyra leaves and a variety of other physical boundary-making objects that she witnessed springing up across the landscape of her hometown, Jaffna. Though the citizens of Jaffna are free to move around freely, after the cessation of military operations by the Sri Lanka government in May 2009, the city remains under military control. On one level Nilani’s drawings appear to explore the idea of home from the standpoint of residing within an enclosure or a city under siege. On another level, the endless fences that dominate her drawings appear to parody the very idea of territory. Her fences are fanciful, imagined structures that provide no clear demarcation of a right or a wrong side. Alternatively, they appear to patchwork together the remains of the conflict—the old security barrels, the former security zone fences—enmeshed with the debris and flora found in the city, as it attempts to renew itself and move on. Her fences exude a defiant beauty, as strange and surreal as the structures from which they descend.

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