Implicit in its title, Tina Kim Gallery’s summer group show ‘The Calling of Home’ presents work by four artists who address the notion of home as a complex space involving multiple geographies and cultural inputs. This tulip petal collage on paper by Jennifer Tee taps into traditions of Indonesian tampan textiles, which were gifted at ceremonies marking different stages of life. Woven by women in Lampung, located on the important historic trade route between Java and Sumatra, the fabrics often incorporated imagery of ships as a metaphor for movement. In Tee’s practice, boat imagery and the tulip petals she uses as her material point to her own family’s migration from Indonesia to the Netherlands in the 1950s; titled ‘Ship of Souls,’ this piece goes further to suggest passage into the spiritual realm. (On view in Chelsea through Sept 6th).
