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Before films animated silver screens and novels were churned out of printing presses, stories could be preserved and distributed in tapestries. Action-packed scenes unfold in Jennifer Tee’s striking Tampan Tulip (2014– ) collages, which draw from the tampan, or ship cloths, of southern Sumatra’s Lampung region. Several symbols reappear throughout the series, including a symmetrical ship with a high prow and stern pictured with angular lines. In Tampan World Mountain, Tree of Life (2021), a column of tessellated, diamantine forms soars skyward from the vessel like an arboreal mast, another recurring motif. A human figure reaches for a trunk while two others are tethered via intricate, cascading branches. Swimming under the jagged waves that lap at the bilge are octopuses and fish. 

 As with ceremonial tampan, in Tee’s work, multiple stories are told at once: the ship represents the passage through life’s stages, including death, while the networks of tree limbs reflect the connectedness of all souls. Occasionally, as in Tampan Womb of Time (2017), Tee places an upside-down ship over an upright one to suggest a womb, a microcosm of the universe. For the artist, a descendent of a Dutch tulip-bulb exporter on her maternal side and a Dutch immigrant of Indonesian-Chinese heritage on her paternal side, the ship also resonates as a tool of trade and migration. Peering closer at her collages, one realizes she has incorporated her familial history in the works’ material as well: the deep indigo vessel in Tampan World Mountain is made of layered petals from actual Queen of Night tulips, and the painterly streaks of yellow-on-purple in the tree come from a Rembrandt tulip—the sought-after varietal that sparked the economic phenomenon now known as tulipmania. Over time, the petals subtly transform in color, encapsulating transient moments that hold both endings and beginnings.