Jennifer Tee, Tampan Tree of Life, Semangka Bay, 2019, piezography on 315 grams museum etching paper, 165 x 188 cm, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam.

Jennifer Tee

Jennifer Tee (b. 1973, Arnhem) lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The objects that Tee creates can be seen as material representations of the journey of the soul. Questioning the relationship between spirit and matter, she works to give form to the intangible through material experimentation and performative gestures.

Tee was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, NL, and ISCP, New York, US. She was awarded the Amsterdam Prize in 2020.

Tee's Tampan series consists of collages made from pressed tulip petals, with motifs taken from the Tampan, square-shaped woven cloths that were exchanged during important rites of passage. Tampan are found in the Lampung region of southern Sumatra, a crucial trade route since antiquity, which has long been a crossroads of cultures and artistic traditions.

Tee extended her research into the Indonesian weavings by travelling to the Lampung area. She sought to explore these family heirlooms, which predominantly feature a ship with a mast that often branches out into a tree of life – evocative of human souls continuing on to new lives. The designs’ deeper meaning, the subject of migration, is of particular interest to Tee. Her father migrated with his parents and sister to the Netherlands from Indonesia on a ship in the 1950s.

Installation view Let It Come Down, Camden Arts Centre, 2017, photo Mark Blower, courtesy Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam.

Jennifer Tee on Let It Come Down, Camden Arts Centre, 2017.