Bound Together on a Book of Antiwar Sri Lankan Drawings

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Bound Together: On a Book of Antiwar Sri Lankan DrawingsAuthor(s): Qadri IsmailSource: Art Journal, Vol. 68, No. 4 (WINTER 2009), pp. 6-23Published by: College Art Association

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Muhanned Cader, A/, from The One Year

Drawing Project: May 2005-October 2007,

2005, graphite pencil on paper, IWa x 814 in.

(29.7 x 21 cm) (artwork Muhanned Cader)

Qadri Ismail

Bound Together:On a Book ofAntiwar

Sri Lankan Drawings

1. his essay findsGayatri Spivak's formulation

of reading instructive: Iwould rather think f

the text as my accomplice thanmy patient or...

analysand." Spivak, "The New Historicism:

PoliticalCommitment and the Postmodern Critic,"inThe New Historicism,ed. H. Aram Veeser

(London: Routledge, 1989), 289. The text, in

Spivak's understanding, isanalogous to a partner,

somethingone works with; as opposed to an inert

object one interprets.2. Newman's Onement series isnot read thus,but

could be: a scenewith one (thin)vertical strip in

distinctcolor and thickstripsof a different oloron either side ("background") isstagingnot justthe concept "one" but,whatever its uthor's

intention, two," aswell (and perhaps even three,not tomention four?the whole), and the relation

between one and two (and three and four). It

suggests thatone only gains its ense inoppositionto two, a deconstructive commonplace. (Otherwise, itmust be held that the second color?

orange, for instance, hich dominates Onement I

?does not signify,ut that the thinstrip f brown

nevertheless does.) Playingwith this insightndthe considerably thinnerwidth of the central strip,Onement stages a relation between major and

minor. Put differently,orm isalways already con

tent,even in bstract art; the signified annot be

expelled from the signifier,s in ormalist ccounts

ofAbstract Expressionism.As Roland Barthes putit:"Meaning iscunning:drive itaway and itgallopsback." Barthes, "That Old Thing,Art..." in he

Responsibilityf Forms,trans.Richard Howard

(Berkeley:Universityof California Press), 202.

The blurb on theback of thebook promises "an exchange of viewpoints?artisticand ideological?sustained during a period of violent conflict in SriLanka."

However, the firstimage in TheOneYearDrawing roject, collection of drawings by

fourSri Lankan artistsfrom 200c to 2007, when the twenty-five-year-oldar

between themajoritarian Sinhala nationalist stateand theTamil nationalist resis

tance reintensified, does nottransparently stage the country, or violence. Rather,

Muhanned Cader's figure s abstract. If it isobviously com

posed of threedistinct,bound parts, the signifiedsof theseelements arenot easily apparent.They do not seem to refer

to either Sri Lanka or thewar. The drawing's lackof titledoes

not help, either (although a titleby itself s not binding).From itsopening image, then,TheOneYearDrawing rojectdemands theengaged participation of its reader.Reading art,

it suggests, even"political" art, requires effort.1 Confronted

by Cader's "difficult" drawing,a certain type of reader, sane

tionedby arthistory and accustomed todeferring to authority, ill consult the

artist?forwhom the imagewas inspiredby a chess piece, the rook. She'llwon

der what thedrawing says about an ancient board game, or largefortified uild

ings,or about things thatonlymove in straight ines,and theirconnection toSri Lanka. Another reader,also sanctioned by thediscipline,might simplyfind

itbeautiful.A third, nterpellated by realism,would shake her head, bemused

as always by abstraction.The patient reader, thekind demanded by thisbook,

would make theeffort, ook to thedetail of the image fordirection. Shewill

note thatthebigger shape on theupper half gets thinner toward the top,with

a peculiar polygonal format itsapex; that thebig shape on the lower end getsthicker toward thebottom; thattheformer is colored dark gray; the latter, lack;

and the small shape in themiddle, a lightergray. he threeobjects are distin

guished by shape, size, and color. Shemay conclude that thefiguremakes a state

ment?a pictorial, semiotic, but notunambiguous

statement?on contrast, size,

difference.One could, following this insight,playwith how thedrawing stagestherelations among big, bigger, and small; between, inotherwords, minor

and major.The adventurous mighteven recall Barnett Newman.2 But the reader

familiarwith themap of SriLanka would notice a resonance: itsupper half, too,

gets thinnertoward the top,or north,with a peninsula at itsapex (albeit turned

west, not east like thepolygon in thedrawing); and thicker toward the south.

The figure is centered on thepage, self-contained; it standsby itself ithout

reference to another?like an island. Cader may have been inspired, consciously,

bya chess piece. Nevertheless, themap, or naturalized outline of Sri Lanka, has

left ts trait n his picture.The drawing illustrates, uite superbly, n fact, thepoststructuralisttruism

that the text s social, that,regardlessof theauthor s intentionor inspiration,hertext is inextricable from other texts?political, economic, aesthetic, cartographic

?and so, inevitably, nconsciously,marked by them.That, toparaphrase John

Donne, no island is an island. Cader spicture directs thepatient reader tomake

an extra effort(ifonly a quick web search), directs her to SriLanka, a place split,inhis staging,between north, south, and center. o thoseunfamiliarwith the

country, the routinized, news-agency plot of its postcolonial story goes some

thing like this: since 1983,SriLanka has experienced a virulent ethnic conflict

7 artjournal








3.Majority andminority,of course, are not facts,or self-evident truths (of arithmetic), but ideological terms.

4. The definitionshere and below are fromthe

OxfordEnglishDictionary (0?D).

5. Muhanned Cader, ThamotharampillaiShanaathanan, Chandraguptha Thenuwara, and

Jagath eerasinghe, TheOne YearDrawing Project:

May 2005-October 2007 (London: Raking Leaves,

2008). Each artistcontributed fifty-two rawings.The originals,all on A4-size paper, are reproduced

exactingly, xquisitely.The book isunpaginated,and each untitleddrawing is identifiedby a letter

and number;Cader's firstdrawing is I. The

book's ironic itle?the exchange lasted longerthan a year?is not explained.

between itsmajority Sinhalas,who inhabit the south, andminority Tamils, in

thenorth.Tens of thousands have been killed on both sides. Ifher informanthas

anonbinary view, she will learn thatMuslims, a smaller minority, have been

dragged into themiddle of thehostilities. In contrast,a leftist ccountmightcharacterize postcolonial Sri Lanka as a place of domination and oppression of

theother, theTamils andMuslims, bymajoritarian Sinhala nationalism (an ideol

ogy,not tobe conflatedwith an entirepeople).3 Itmight insist that Sinhala

nationalism has been and isbrutallyoppressive, and thatthemilitants of theLiberationTigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) resistedmajoritarian domination, often

throughbrutalmeans. Cader's figure could be read?without, it should be

stressed,denying thepossibility of other readings?as staging, in abstract and

metaphorical form,not theunalterable essences of but thepolitical relations

among Sri Lanka's Tamils, Muslims, and Sinhalas. Sinhala nationalism, in such

a reading, isdepicted in thedarkest shade, black; theothers, lighter. iven the

associations of black?"foul, iniquitous, atrocious, horribly wicked"?and

white?"pure, honorable, innocent"?the political statement of the picture

isnot difficultto articulate.4 Itprotestsmajoritarianism, whether by Sinhala

nationalism,metaphorically depicted in a largeormajor shape, inblack and

placed in the south,or, in a complicatedmove, by theTamil, also in a large

shape, like theSinhala, placed in the north and colored gray?which suggests,

given the logic of thedrawing, that amils are both minor andmajor. Itdraws

attention,pictorially,not only to the subordination of Tamils inpostcolonialSri Lanka, but to Tamil nationalism's torment of another minority, Muslims,

colored here in the lightestshade, but not, significantly nough, inwhite; even

theMuslims arenotwithout blame. No Sri Lankan group, the textinsists,could

be considered innocent.

Ifwe consider thispicture by itself, tspolitics,while complicated, are not

profound. Theywould be sharedbymany on theSriLankan Left,who do not

understand the conflict in transparent, bad majority-good minority terms. But

thedrawing should not be read by itself, or it isonly thefirst n a book of 208drawings by fourof Sri Lanka'smost aestheticallymature, intellectuallyinciting,and politically responsible contemporary artists:Cader,Thamotharampillai

Shanaathanan, ChandragupthaThenuwara, and Jagath Weerasinghe.s (Since the

question will arise: the SriLankan census interpellatesthemasMuslim, Tamil,

Sinhala, and Sinhala, respectively; though a diverse or politically correctgroup

ing on oneregister, the same census counts them all as male. The group is both

inclusive and exclusive.) Brought togetherby Sharmini Pereira, thebook's editor

and publisher, thefour accomplices, over twenty-ninemonths fromMay 2005

toOctober 2007, mailed drawings to each other, responding to each precedingone, collaborating?"accomplicing," though not an actual word, is the best term

to capture this?in a singular, ifnot art-historically unique, engagement. (For

"engage,"the OED gives "to pledge

. . .expose to risk . .. bind . .. enter into

a covenant orundertaking

... be answerable for . . .committed to . . .urge,

exhort, persuade, induce . . .entangle, involve . . .

attack.") The Project is apoly

vocal collection of discrete drawings, similar to anyother collection bymultiple

artists, and a book in the conventional sense, a more or less coherent whole.

(More and less: if the text cannot avoid being overdetermined by questions of

war, nationalism, or Sri Lankan politics, the drawings have other levels?-the

8 WINTER 2009








6. Sometimes, both together.A heavy smoker

(he has since quit),Cader suffered heart attack

during the project; Shanaathanan responded

poignantlyand, pointedly,depicting a heartwith

a blood vessel doubling as cigarette (A5I). The

drawing isnot outside the thematic of violence?

in hiscase to the self.

7. Its losest cousin isnotUS "mail art," but the

French Surrealist "exquisite corpse," a "game of

folded paper... [inwhich] several people com

pose a phrase or a drawing collectively, none of

the participants havingany ideaof . . .the previous contribution.".Andre Breton, Surrealism nd

Painting, rans. SimonWatson Taylor (Boston:MFA Publications, 2002), 289. Though produced

collectively,theProject's contributions address

each other; the Surrealistproject, in ontrast,

emphasized the accidental, the playful.

8. See, for instance,Participation: ocuments ofContemporaryArt,ed. Claire Bishop (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 2006).9. For a useful critiqueof the excesses of partici

patory art, see Hal Foster, "Chat Rooms," in

Participation.10.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,OtherAsias

(Maiden,MA: Blackwell), 62.

I I.Nicolas Bourriaud, RelationalAesthetics,trans.

Simon Pleasance and FronzaWoods (Dijon: Les

Presses du reel, 2002), 7.

personal, even thehumorous.)6 Everydrawing both signifiesby itself, ould be

tornout and framed if the reader so desires, and at the same timedoes not sig

nify, emands tobe read as part of an ensemble, as a response to and entanglement with theothers,with contemporary Sri Lankan politics, and with thewar.

There is, to the best knowledge of thisresearcher,no artbook quite like it.7 ut

originality isnot the termthroughwhich itmakes itscase for critical attention.

(In any case, is there such a thingas theabsolutely new?) Rather, its significancelies in responsible engagement.

Entangling with the postcolonial Sri Lankan present, the war, and the conse

quences of decades of domination of theother by Sinhala nationalism, thefour

accomplices protest and producean alternative to thatmiserable present, not as a

political program ormanifesto, but by putting on display and pictorially staginga differentrelation to theother,a responsible, deferentialone (which requiresthe reader'spatience todivulge). This engaged alternative does not desire and is

not predicated on uniformity?a ground of nationalism?and does not inhibit

disagreement; rather, it exhorts and incites the latter. In sodoing, the four artists

confront their reader, challenge her, in turn, to become their accomplice. Their

work could be situated, ifonly by the speed-reader,within theframe of anti

elitist,"participatory" art,a pivotal recentdevelopmentwithin thediscipline.8Such art seeks tobreak the frame between art and reader, subject and object,inside and out.While no leftist ould be opposed to antiexclusivism, to thecri

tique of the elitist itinerary f thediscipline?even ifClement Greenberg, noto

riously,reconciled socialism with snobbery?it bears recalling, asRoland Barthes

has taughtus, thatdisciplines cannot be easily galloped away from, thatto label

something (as participatory art,orwith another adjective) is to frame, tobe

complicitouswith arthistory. hus thematurity of theProject,hich departs

significantly rom theexuberance of participatory art: insteadof producing the

mere factof collaboration as an unquestionable good, of takingthe inevitabilityof complicity

as apoint of departure, it offers an incite-ful, interventionary

instance of engagement.9 It takes a stand, a risk, a position not without its own

risk:partisanship, asGayatri Spivak remindsus,while necessary foranypolitics,is exclusivist.IO To take a stand is to draw a line between inside and outside, us

and them.This makes it impossible todefer to the other (them); or, rather, uch

a position "others" evenwhile deferring.Put differently,heProjecttraddles the

tension between responsibility and engagement, which are concatenated in the

text. It asserts that the artist must engage and confront her reader aesthetically,

intellectually,nd politically; that t is riskier to avoid takinga stand thannot to

take one on the grounds of a facile openness, an easy egalitarianism,or a

quick

collapsing of theheterogeneity of reader and text. tdoes not see theartistas

social secretary?alsoa stand, if in themost amiable sense?who organizes "a

dinner in a collector's home, and leaves him all the ingredientsrequired tomake. . .

soup. . .

[or]aweekly gym workshop in a

gallery,"as Nicolas Bourriaud

characterizes examples of this new art." The text incites its reader notjust

because ofwhat it is, theproduct of accomplices, but because ofwhat and how

it says. If books, as Bourriaud insists, are aprivate pleasure?unlike

apublic

museum?this one, in a country effectively without such a space, implicitly

produces itself as an alternative, ifnot in opposition, to the private collections

inwhich most modern SriLankan art, including theproduction of these four, s

9 artjournal








ChandragupthaThenuwara, A2, from

The One Year Drawing Project: May2005-October 2007,2005, pen and ink n

paper, I 12A 8% in.(29.7 x 21 cm) (artwork? Chandraguptha Thenuwara)

Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan, A3,from The One Year Drawing Project: May2005-October 2007,2005, drypastel on

paper, IIVa x SlA in. (29.7 x 21 cm) (artwork

? Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan)

12. he (ill-maintained)collection in ri Lanka's

National Gallery consistsmostly of portraitsof

major politicalfiguresfrom the immediatepostcolonialperiod,with a handful of laterpaintingsand

hardlyany sculpture.Nobody could consider it

representative ofmodern Sri Lankan art.More

recently, broader PresidentialCollection was

initiatedduringthe administration of Chandrika

Kumaratunga (1994-2005). It isunfinished,partlydue to financialconstraints,as the budgetary,and

ideological,priority f her successor, Mahinda

Rajapakse, has been thewar.

13.Jagath eerasinghe, "Contemporary Art in

Sri Lanka," in rt and Social Change: ContemporaryArt inAsia and thePacific, d. Caroline Turner

(Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005), 189.

14. he '43Group introducedmodernism to Sri

Lankan art under latecolonialism, in he 1940s.

Among the less celebrated but aesthetically and

politicallymore complicated members of the

group are the painters Justinaraniyagala and

IvanPeries, and LionelWendt, a photographer.A superb,well-maintained collection of the

group's production isdisplayed at the SapumalFoundation in olombo, open to the public and

freeof charge.15. he Vibhavi Academy of FineArts, "initiated"

byThenuwara in 1993,and the Theertha Inter

national Artists' Collective, whichWeerasinghehas chaired since 2000, respectively.16.Weerasinghe, "Contemporary Art in ri

Lanka," 189.

stowed (if itdoes not also confront theglobal artmuseum, which barely recognizes Sri Lanka).12 It suggests therebythat thebook, as such, cannot be deemed a

purely private pleasure; but then,no published work?a priced object, for sale,

unlike theartifacts fmuseums?could be.

Cader, Shanaathanan, Thenuwara, andWeerasingheare

part of a cohort of

SriLankan artiststhat the latter as dubbed?distinguishing us from them?the

"90s trend,"a singular politico-aestheticmoment inpostcolonial SriLanka.13 he

dominant strand in twentieth-century riLankan art,both realist and, from the

1940s,modernist, tended topaint thevillage,more broadly culturalist scenes,

or theprivate (heterosexual love). Exemplaryhere is theproduction ofGeorge

Keyt, amodernist and, effectively,nticolonial painter, thedoyen of the '43

Group.14Breakingwith realism,Keyt's paintings innovativelyfuse French cubism

with the national?or, as some may have it, the "traditional"?older Sinhala

and northern Indian forms (the lines, for instance,of Lanka's Sigiriya frescoes).However, his stagingofwomen is symptomaticof anticolonial nationalism: theyare consistentlydenuded, sexualized.When depicted outside, theyare alwaysassociated with therural,nature (flowers, leaves) or,when inside, culture in the

orientalist sense (dancing, pounding rice); they re never staged in thepublic

sphere. One would today characterize his production as patriarchal, orientalist,

and complicitouswith majoritarian Sinhala nationalism. Breakingwith thisaes

thetic,the cohort of 1990s artistshas confronted thepublic and theurban, and

brought thecity to thecanvas; ithas refiguredold questions, like that f the

woman, with the insightsand imperativesof feminism (Anoli Perera,Nelun

Harasgama) and raised repressed ones, like caste (Pala Pothupitiye). Challenginga long-established, elitist systemof patronage, theyhave even opened theirown

thriving rt school and gallery,both outside Colombo;15 but theycannot avoid

complicitywith such patronage, either?the bookwas launched in an exclusive

Colombo space. Perhapsmost important,while postcolonial SriLankan arthas

avoided political statements, this cohort sees its task, accordingtoWeerasinghe,

its leading aesthetico-intellectual force, as immediate, urgent, "interventionary."

Weerasinghe holds that,given the (colonial, homogenizing) baggage of univer

salism, the artists' imperative is intervention in, engagement with, and abiding

by theproblems, difficulties, nd challenges of contemporary Sri Lanka.16

The Projects an exemplary instanceof responsible engagementwith Sri

Lanka. As is to be expectedin a

large ensemble, the drawingsare not always

con

sistent. he second,Thenuwara's response toCader, isdismissive (of theother?

of a friendwith whom he's angry?or, inescapably,both?). Itdoes not respondto the picture, carries no trait of it?no line, stroke, mark, connection, or

signature.Where Cader is tight, ound, contained in thecenterof thepage,

Thenuwara's design sprawls all over, isopen (at itsends, though its intricacy

suggests a certain constriction).While itmay seem playful, itdoes not avoid thewar; attention to its detail reveals many contoured, leaflike shapes: most are nar

row ovals, but a few take theprofile of thedead, flattenedhuman body laid out

forburial or cremation. The next offering,by Shanaathanan, ismore involved: it

takes henuwara's curved shapes, transformsthem intomarks on thebiggest of

his feet,depicted in close-up, dominating thepage.With two smaller feet inside

thebiggest, itresonates strongly, houghnot obviously,with Cader's picture,recastshis stagingof therelations among the three:one of the feet ismuch

10 WINTER 2009
























Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan, A43,

from The One Year Drawing Project May2005-October 2007,2007, pen and ink n

paper, SVa x I \ A in.(21 x 29.7 cm) (artwork? Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan)

also, by recalling the shape of his opening figure. ader defers often tohis

accomplices?by being not supplicative, but responsive to the other.He does

not, however, surrenderhis (pictorial) integrity; e respondswhile engaging.Indeed, his offerings

areexemplary of that concatenation. Here, iterating

Weerasinghe, Cader furnishes the abstract figure ith hands and feet,meticu

lously shaded to stage thefiction of perspective (andmake thehands, at least,

look old, beaten,worn down). The feetare on theground, thefigure is

"worlded," stands alert,on its toes,perhaps wanting toflee; but it isnot about

tomove, for itshands areup in theubiquitous signifier f submission, ifnot

surrender, to the threat of violence. Cader sfigure, too, is immobile, restrained,

both inposture and appearance, tightly rapped in tiny ands thatbind it

severely, ecalling both a straitjacketand thewounded, bandaged body.The bands

are shaded, like the hands and feet;nevertheless, thebody appears flat, lackingindepth, substance, completion. At its top, again binding thisdrawingwith

Weerasinghe's, untidy, somewhat less turbulent,small black arcs (resembling

cigarette smoke) emerge from thecovered, compressed head and are directed

beyond thepage. They disturb and present a strikingcontrast to theneat and

ordered lines, the tightly tructuredscene, of the restof thepicture. Cader here

stages a relationbetween order and disruption; the consequence of a strict isci

plinary regime,he concurswith or defers toWeerasinghe, while differing,sup

plementing his figurewith thebands, is theeruption, and thebeginning of the

violent dissolution of themale body.The impact and the inscriptionof thewar on themale body is a recurrent

thematicof theensemble, consistendy raised by Shanaathanan andWeerasinghe.Inmany drawings, Shanaathanan stages themale Tamil body as theobject of

(state) violence, particularlybombs and torture; t is oftendepicted as disem

boweled, the insides out.The relentlessnesswith which he returns to this

theme?the body,whole or otherwise, features in all but four of his offerings?serves as a stark reminder, a

powerful and powerless protest?art, after all, can

only protest,not prevent?of the loss, suffering, nd predicament of civilianTamils since at least 1983.Shanaathanan insists that,from theperspective of the

Tamil citizen, the consequence of war has been and is the disruption, disloca

tion,and destruction of everyday life. his insistenceon foregrounding theTamil

perspectivemight suggest that Shanaathanan sdrawings arenarcissistic, bound

toor circumvallated by the self.They are not so limited; theyrespond tohis

accomplices and bear the trait f the other.One lateroffering is instructive; t

contains just two objects, twoparallel figures, at once similar and dissimilar: a

naked, again headless, male body depicted flyingacross the topor north of the

picture, and an airplane at thebottom or south.The iterationof the shape and

posture of theplane in theposture of theman and theirparallel locations at the

north and south of the scene?which has an empty center?associate the work

of (military) aircraft ith thedecapitation of themale Tamil body.The staging,of course, ismorbidly ironic: theplane should be flying;here, it is grounded,

askew, crashed,with a brokenwing. One could read itas fantasizingvictoryover theSri Lankanmilitary thathas unremittinglybombed thenorth in the

decades of thewar. Indeed, theLTTE has, thoughnot recently, owned Sri

Lankan aircraft. ut thedrawing isnot necessarily celebratoryof political vio

lence. The twoparallel figures suggest a certain equivalence: a reminder that

14 WINTER 2009








-?-?








JagathWeerasinghe, A44, from The One

Year Drawing Project: May 2005-October

2007,2007, ballpoint and gel pens on paper,I 13/4 8/4 in.(297 x 21 cm) (artwork Jagath

Weerasinghe)

C hand raguptha Then uwara, A45, from

The One Year Drawing Project: May 2005

October 2007,2007, pen and ink n paper,I 13/4 8'/4 in. (29.7 x 21 cm) (artwork

Chandraguptha Thenuwara)

theTamil body isboth theobject of violence and its subject, and that theTamil

resistancehas been brutal, too.Here, thatbody isheadless, airborne, and, in an

ironic reversal, the bigger,more dominant of the two, the subject of its scene.

Itrecalls theLTTE'smost publicized, ifnot potent,weapon, instrumentof the

deaths ofmany southern civilians, the suicide-bomb (or is itbomber?); that

individual's head is almost always blown offas a consequence of the explosion.This Shanaathanan offeringacknowledges Tamil (nationalist) agency in southern

civilian mortality.

Weerasinghe's response to this drawing of Shanaathanan, amore or less

erect (in both senses)male figure,directs the reader's attentionback to aggressive Sinhala nationalism, now

producedas

gendered, masculine. It expresses

disagreement by staging a differentmale body as agent of SriLankan violence

and placing thatfigure at thecenterof thepage; perhaps itfigures the absent

center.Drawn with ballpoint and gel pens, not the easiest ormost forgivingof media, the figure stands almost straight,

in a semiaggressive, somewhat tri

umphant pose, the slightest f crouches; it seems ready topounce, grab,or

tackle something. Most strikingly, it ismasked and wears a crown(otunna in

Sinhala). One of thefew culturalist signifiers n thebook, itassociateswhat

nationalism (not tomention orientalism and anthropology) would deem tradi

tional Sinhala culturewith theoppression of theTamil, thepolitical violence

stagedin Shanaathanan. Weerasinghe's drawing suggests that Sinhala nationalism

masks itself nd itsrepressivepolitical programwith the alibi of culture, that

culture isnot theessence of a people but is inseparable frompolitics.However,

Sinhala nationalism in general isnot thedrawing's sole target. he work of a

more particularpolitics, a virulent variantof nationalism, is signifiedby the

color of thefigure,blue, theemblematic shade of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom

Party (SLFP) ofMahinda Rajapakse, thepresident of SriLanka since 2005. His

regimehas pursued thewar against theLTTE, ifnot theTamils andMuslims,

with unprecedented force and brutality since his election, celebrating it as a

patriotic duty and dismissing theprotests of theLeft,human-rightsworkers,and others in opposition

asterrorist-sympathizers,

even traitors. Colored thus,

Weerasinghe's drawing aligns itself ith such protest, insists thatthewar is

both theconsequence of an ideology and theact, the responsibility, f a political

party; indeed, the crown and the centered, frightening, semitriumphant,sexu

ally excited figuredirect the readerpointedly to the head of state,thebodywith head, Rajapakse.

In thiscontextof theSinhala nationalist glorificationofwar, Thenuwara's

answer to thedrawing depictswhat itcamouflages: death.The figurehere is

outlined in and takes the same postureasWeerasinghe's, concurring with it,

more or less,on thatnationalism's responsibilityfor thefighting.But drawn in

black,without a culturalist signifier r the trait f a crown,Thenuwara's drawingdirects responsibilityaway from theSLFP government,PresidentRajapakse, the

specific, and locates itwithin the general, the ideological?nationalism and,

also,militarism. This could be read as expressing disagreementwithWeerasinghe

(unlike thoseof his accomplices, Thenuwara's early contributions affirm thenew

Rajapakse government), or itcould suggest a differentemphasis, as elaborating

Weerasinghe's claim, asWeerasinghe's first drawing does with Shanaathanan's

initial offering. Its lines aremostly vertical, straight, unaccommodating, and

16 WINTER 2009















Nelun Harasgama, Waiting, Walled, 2006,

oil on canvas, 60 x 42 in.(152.4 x 106.7 cm)

(artwork Nelun Harasgama)

18.For the anthropologically inclined, he census

would interpellateHarasgama as Sinhala.

broken, disconnected, signifyingthat theSriLankan body politic itself reaks

apart as a consequence of Sinhala nationalism's unyielding insistenceon domi

nating its others. So doing, of course, entangles thisdrawing not onlywith the

critique of nationalism but the thematicof incompletion, disconnection, and

lack, thatrecurs through the book. Interspersedwith thesedisjointed lines,more

easily discerned than inThenuwara's initialdrawing, are tiny, lattenedhuman

figures (a recurrenttrope).The biggest, the farthest ne on the right,has its

hands across itschest?as in the dead human body laid out forfinal, funeralrites: theconsequence of thenationalistwar isdeath, disability, the splinteringof thebody politic. Or is it just themale body?

Thenuwara's figurebears nomark or suggestion of gender; however, since

it iterates Weerasinghe's shape,one cannot but read it as male. Put differently, the

relations among nationalism, war, and masculinityare another thematic raised

by theProject.f thisresonateswith recentfeminist scholarship, itdoes so againstitsgrain. Feminism, afterall, does not address thequestion ofmasculinity by

elidingwomen. In theentirebook,women figure in justfiveof the 208 draw

ings.While thiscalls foran account of theelision, ifnot of theentanglementofwomen and thewar, in the interest f interruptingtheProject parabasis), of

calling attention to its overwhelming masculinity, this essay turns to the recent

production of an artist who consistently thematizes the woman question, Nelun

Harasgama.18A recurrent scene in her production

is an individual figure,or

two, inside (a room). At times, the room has anopening?a door or window?

at others, a piece of furniture. When the scene contains acouple, they

arestaged

away from each other, disconnected, estranged. (Aren't disconnection and

estrangement aptmetaphors forcontemporary SriLanka?) Often, thepaintings

depicta

singlewoman in a corner, cornered, confined, restricted. The quickest

reading of theseHarasgama paintings ispsychologistic: theytreatprivate, self

indulgentlybourgeois, and therefore ot "political" questions like loneliness,

anomie, and broken (heterosexual) relationships. While enabled by the text,

such an account ismeager. For, as feminism has taught us, coding scenes or plots

as personal elides the social, thepolitical. A reading of one Harasgama paintingwill help iterate this hoary?and far from established?feminist truism.

InWaiting,Walled, Harasgama depictsawoman, seated, on the ground of an

open doorway; therestof the scene is thefloor andwall of a room, bare except

ing a chair?in a styleonemight find in anyurban space,whether Colombo or

Copenhagen, signifyingneithernature nor orientalist culture,butmodernity.

The grayfloorboards and wall?the latterthe shade of concrete?underline the

urban; the scene as awhole, thedrab, banal, dispiriting everyday. he female

figure?her dress, in theSriLankan context,does not somuch signifyclass or

westernization asgender?occupies

a liminal space, neither inside nor outside,

which resonates with its pose, neither vertical nor horizontal. It is not on the

empty straight-backedchair, though itsposture iterates the shape?the woman's

back is straight, vertical, one of the legs, horizontal?rather, the figure faces

thechair, as ifto acknowledge and enhance theresonance, being shaped and

objectified by another object; both of themare further ssociated by their

color,white. If thefigure ispictorially linkedwith thechair; it is also distanced,

depicted inprofile,while the chair isdrawn frontally nd, of course, located

away from it, in the doorway, the opening. The liminal location and posture

18 WINTER 2009















ChandragupthaThenuwara, A6, from

The One Year Drawing Project: May 2005

October 2007,2005, pencil on paper, I I3/*

8'/4 in. (29.7 x 21 cm) (artwork Chandraguptha

Thenuwara)

19.VirginiaWoolf, A Room ofOne's Own

(New York: Harvest Books, 1989), 4.

20. Assia Djebar, Women ofAlgiers inTheir

Apartment,trans.Marjolijn de Jager

(Charlottesville:UniversityofVirginiaPress ,

1992), 136.

produce thewoman as not entirelyat ease inside,within theprivate sphere, even

ifshaped by it.For she is also associatedwith theoutside, the space colored

white, again likeher clothes, suggesting thatthewoman?and the chair?maybemore athome outside (the home), in thepublic sphere.Maybe; for thefigureisnot located outside, either.Something prevents or prohibits thatstep, that

mobility. The immobility is reinforcedby themovement of thepainting: the

straight ines of thefloorboards in the bottom of the scenemove and point

towardher, as do theverticalbrushstrokesof thewall, the top.Bothmeet at thehorizontal lineonwhich, like the target f a pincer, thefigure ispinned down.

This position resonateswith the arrangement of thebody: framed almost per

fectly y thedoorway?confined within a confine, entombed?the leftleg leans

into the room, cannot escape it.Head downcast, the woman iswalled, bound,

trapped,not just inside theroom but, this textsuggests incitingly, y it.

A citation ofVirginiaWoolf here is irresistible. (LeonardWoolf, serendipi

tously, nce worked for theBritish administrative service in colonial SriLanka.)The textdirects itsreader to thatfoundational statementof (Western) feminism:

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is towrite fiction"?

or, onemight say, produce

art in the broad sense.19 Woolf, of course, grasped

women in universalist terms. Harasgama's Sri Lankan woman, however, is singu

larlydifferent:staged as both associatedwith a room, in thatsense having

one, but restrained, limitedby it. here Woolf sfigure is "locked out"?by the

patriarchal academy?andso desires her own space, Harasgama

s is locked in.

Harasgama's text terates nd breakswithWoolf s formulation, signifies that t

isboth produced by the script thatproducedWoolf,Western feminism, and dif

ferent, not committed to repeating unqualifiedlya "common sentence." The

room, ametaphor for freedom, autonomy, and agency, preconditions for creativ

ity inWoolf, isstaged

in Harasgamaas incarcerating. It is at best an

inadequate

space, a lack, inwhich the woman?not justSri Lankan but postcolonial?can

only wait, bide the time. The figure reminds one, as Assia Djebar insists in her

powerful reading of Eugene Delacroix, that"women [are] alwayswaiting."20To

Djebar, thepostcolonial Algerianwoman, despite fightingwith and in the anti

colonial resistance, is effectively eturned,after thedefeat of theFrench, to the

closed space of theharim.Djebar s claim isnot thefacile, easily refutedone that

the situation of postcolonial Algerianwomen has not changed, but thatsubordi

nation continues differently, that the promises of national liberation and equal

citizenshiphave not been kept. Likewise, thepostcolonial SriLankanwoman

waits, walled. Harasgamaswoman is also produced by this script, postcolonial

feminism, as she is, singularly, y others, including?her painting, inevitably,

entangleswith and rebukesKeyt?the patriarchal one of Sri Lankan art. It, too,

makes her wait.

If theProject,hen, is a series of engaged responses to theother, if the fouraccomplices often defer to each other, it cannot avoid "othering." Of course, all

instances are notequal;

no responsible leftist could excuse its "othering" of

women. But what of its denial of a hearing,so to say, to Sinhala nationalism? My

reading of the book turns n the claim thattheProjecttages a responsible alter

native to themiserable Sri Lankan present.Does theProject engagementwith

theplace suggest, as the indispensable element of that lternative,thedelegiti

mization of Sinhala nationalism? Perhaps, thoughnot transparently.till, insofar

20 WINTER 2009















as thisoccurs, does itnot, perversely enough, "other" Sinhala nationalism? One

could argue so; but perhaps also peace in SriLanka, not homonymous with a

ceasefireor theend ofwar, isnot possible with Sinhala nationalism; orwith

Tamil nationalism, assuggested in Cader's intial drawing. Perhaps narcissism,

politics bound by the self, nhibitsor even prohibits peace.While such a readingis enabled by the text,theProject,ne should not forget, s a polyvocal series of

drawings.Taken as awhole, itdoes not advance a political position in thepro

grammatic sense, apart from being unequivocally antiwar. Instead?and this

position ispolitics, too?it figuresdisagreement: Shanaathanan's firstdrawing

suggests, contraCader's, that theTamils not be seen asmajor;Weerasinghe insists

that theRajapakse regime be identifiedas agent of thewar, whereas Thenuwara

highlights an ideology; and so on. Their disagreement does not impede but is an

imperativeof theirentanglement. In the contextof theuniformitydesired by Sri

Lankan nationalisms, Tamil and Sinhala, disagreement is a critical element of the

alternative staged in theProject.Themost incite-fulelement of that lternative is to thepolitics of domina

tion, stagedby the text inmany ways. Each accomplice, for instance,contributed

the same number of drawings, fifty-two;f thismakes themequal on one regis

ter, n another,when counted together,the (two interpellatedas) Sinhala overwhelm theMuslim and the amil. One could say that thearithmetical attemptto stage equality deconstitutes itself. omination is also figuredand protested

pictorially,most

insistently by Shanaathanan. The subtlest critique, however, is

borne by theProject's ode of response: by incorporating traits f the others'

drawings, the textssuggest that, hile produced by individuals, theyare not

autonomous. The trait f the other remains on (theproduct of) the self,remind

ing one not justof theheterogeneity of selfand other,but theheterogeneityof the self. he trait lso signifies,as has been claimed throughout thisreading,deference to theother.Not supplication, but precedence; the suggestion that the

selfwaits, ifyou like,foror before theother, that the selfwill not act,produce,

or drawwithout referenceor response to the other (as long as she ismale). Putdifferently, while itmay be transparent that the accomplices, in responding, take

from each other, they give, too.Weerasinghe's first drawing, for instance, regis

tersthe tormentof theother on thebody of the self. In an accomplishment such

as this?unlike the violence of war, which also takes, but forcefully?onecan

only take something given. Even if thegive and take,as thedrawings demon

strate, areheterogeneous: restraint is

pictured differentlyinWeerasinghe's first

drawing and Cader's response to it. he Projectegan, ifbeginnings could be

pinned down, notwith a drawing,which could have been kept to the self,but

with an offering: themailing of thatdrawing by each accomplice to another.

(This act cannot avoid complicitywith the state itopposes; itmust relyon the

postal service.)The offeringbearsapromise:

tocontinue,

tokeep drawing,

and

towait for theresponse of theother, to respond in turn?if theother responds.

Indeed, even if the other does not respond in anymeaningful sense, as in

Thenuwara's initial drawing.

The stagingof such deference, of openness to theother, is, in thisengaged

and, Ihope, responsible reading of TheOneYearDrawing roject,hemost demandingalternative to the politics of domination that has overdetermined postcolonial

Sri Lanka.Nationalism, a narcissism, effectively esponds only to the self. here

22 WINTER 2009








it is closed, theProjectsopen, something that, nsurprisingly,has not escapedtheattentionof theaccomplices. It isfigured inThenuwara's answer toCader s

second drawing; he takesCader's tight ands and opens themout.This drawingdoes not necessarily disagreewith Cader s; itremainswithin the thematicof the

book: thefigure isbound, constricting, interwoven,entangled?an aptmeta

phor,not incidentally, or the text;some of thebands are dark, others lightand

lighter. t ismarked, inevitably, y restriction.But itsends are open?to the

other, the reader, the accomplice whose responsible engagement this textsolicits,

ifnot incites,not only in SriLanka but boundlessly.

Qadri Ismail is ssociate professor of Englishat theUniversityof Minnesota. He isworking on a book on

anti-and postcolonial Sri Lankan painting.

23 artjournal

Documents

Bound Together on a Book of Antiwar Sri Lankan Drawings