Jennifer Tee: Let it Come Down

December 2, 2017 – January 21, 2018

Jennifer Tee’s sculpture, installation, performance and collage take inspiration from esoteric thought and practices. Her sculpture often incorporates labour-intensive, traditional handicrafts such as knitting or pottery and these objects are often then used within performances. This exhibition takes its title from an ominous line spoken by an assassin in William Shakespeare’s 17th century play ‘Macbeth’. Tee has adopted Shakespeare’s metaphor as a central motif for a new body of work inspired by recent political upheaval and corresponding acts of resistance. ‘Let it Come Down’ is also the title for a large-scale collage made from dried tulip petals that Tee harvested in the Netherlands. The work is part of a series that draw upon Sumatran ‘Palepai’ (Ship Cloths); traditional Indonesian textiles that typically depict a journey on water. The works also reference Tee’s own ancestral heritage which includes Dutch Tulip farmers as well as Chinese-Indonesian émigrées. This will be accompanied by 25 new, ceramic ‘resist shapes’; wall-mounted, semispherical sculptures that appear to be dented by force or exposed to heavy rain. An array of hand-knitted objects pieces installed on the floor provide a platform for new performances developed in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Miri Lee, dancers, David Kam and Céline HyunJin Barreau and poet Jane Lewty. The exhibition will also be punctuated by a series of readings delivered by the staff of the Kunstverein from the selection of polemic literature in Tee’s ‘Resist Stack of Books’.

The exhibition has been co-produced with Camden Arts Centre, London and is generously supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the Dutch Embassy, Berlin. It is Tee’s first major solo exhibition in Germany. Jennifer Tee (b. 1973, Arnhem) has held solo exhibitions at Camden Arts Centre, London; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2017); CoBrA Museum, Amstelveen (2016); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2014); Project Art Centre Gallery, Dublin (2013) and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2003). Her work was also included in Manifesta 11, Zurich (2016). She lives and works in Amsterdam.

Jennifer Tee, Let It Come Down, installation view, Bonner Kunstverein, 2017. Photo: Mareike Tocha — Jennifer Tee, *Let It Come Down*, installation view, Bonner Kunstverein, 2017. Photo: Mareike Tocha

Jennifer Tee, Let It Come Down, Performance, Bonner Kunstverein, 2017. Courtesy the artist — Jennifer Tee, *Let It Come Down*, Performance, Bonner Kunstverein, 2017. Courtesy the artist