With this work of dried tulip leaves, Jennifer Tee (1973) creates a world in which Dutch culture and her Chinese-Indonesian roots come together.
The collage is inspired by the motifs of Palepai. These are woven cloths that were used in Sumatra for generations in rites of passage. Palepai often depicted ships with human figures – a reference to life as a spiritual journey.
In Tee's artwork, we see two figures on a boat in an ocean full of sea animals and plant life. 'The mast of the ship is also a tree of life, with its roots reaching deep into the ocean. The roots represent our origins and trace back to plants, animals, and Earth's multimillion-year history.'
The symbolism of a life journey over water plays an important role in her family story. Tee's father came to the Netherlands by boat in the 1950s, and her grandfather traveled the world by ship as an exporter of flower bulbs.
Migration and transition appear frequently in Tee's work. She describes that theme as 'the soul in limbo': a state of being in the in-between. She recognizes a similar quality of indefinability in herself and the world around her. 'No person is one-dimensional. I have various components in me and sometimes you can't pinpoint where something comes from.' This also applies to the tulip; although the flower is seen as a Dutch icon, it's originally from Central Asia.
This artwork incorporates several unusual tulip varieties, including the Rembrandt Tulip with its flame pattern. Every spring, she harvests the flowers she works with from the historic Hortus Bulborum garden, in Limmen.
Jennifer Tee studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her work has been shown at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and Secession in Vienna. She has received several awards for her sculptures, installations, performances, and collages.