Illusions of Separation: The Walls in Ivan Vladislavi?'s Portrait with Keys

In Portrait with Keys (2006), Ivan Vladislavi? explores the social dynamic of post-apartheid South Africa through architecture, and particularly through walls. Walls are normally seen as dividing structures, yet scholars in the field of border poetics show that boundaries do not only divide, but are also contact zones. Border poetics, therefore, provides a framework for investigating the separation and connection that the walls in Portrait with Keys bring about. In this article, I read social interaction, identity formation, time and change through the walls and along the "Walls" and "Painted Walls" routes in this book. I show that the walls, quintessential symbols of division, are employed in the text to facilitate and modulate contact; that they contribute to identity formation, often in unpredictable ways; and that they modulate characters' experience of time, while recording change in the city.