In our months of conversation, artist Tarik Ahlip and I kept returning to the idea of imprisonment. In Sri Lanka, where I write from, Bogambara, a maximum-security prison established in 1876 by the British administration, was closed in 2014, with the explicit aim of developing it into a “Cultural Park”. In February 2026, I visited the prison with the hopes of seeing it in its original reputation of stone walls of colonial architecture—it was also recommended to the public as a site of “sightseeing”. 

On a long walk, I wander into a solo show of the artist Pierette Bloch. 

The main room has a long wall text that I mostly skim ... something about the repetition and rhythm within her practice resembling time within music. 

Across the room, I see a piece covered in short marks of rich black ink. 

Votives, archives, storehouses, bric-a-brac shelves, the magnetic side of my boiler, mantlepieces, picture galleries, display cases, messy drawers, white IKEA Kallaxs and shelving units from Habitat, pinboards, Pinterest, the area of skin that starts under my right arm and goes down to my knees, Encyclopedia Madonnica, hard-drives with the orange rubber lifejackets, a jeweller’s well-worn fingers

There is a very particular shade of blue that is created by shadows left when sunlight reflects off snow. Luminous and cold, tinged with white light, it catches in drifts and at the base of trees.