Text by Alex Liew
Before it takes the form of paint or installation, Jaee Tee takes an approach that’s rooted in noticing. A banyan tree, for instance, is never just a subject but a way of thinking. Unlike most trees, it does not begin anchored in soil.
Its seeds are carried by birds and lodged in other trees or cracks in stone, where roots slowly descend towards the ground. A life that starts suspended before gradually claiming its place. For Jaee Tee, this reversal feels deeply familiar.
Her practice often returns to ideas of belonging and adaptation, shaped by a Chinese diasporic background in Malaysia and a lifelong connection with nature. The natural world is never simply a backdrop in her work, but a living system through which questions of ancestry, identity and time are explored.
“The banyan tree has been occupying my thoughts,” she says. “Not only because of how it looks, but because of how it begins.” Through her upbringing, she sees parallels between the tree’s unusual beginnings and her own understanding of identity.
“I’ve come to believe that roots are not only inherited,” she reflects. “They are formed through adaptation, relationships and time.” Over the past decade, Tee’s practice has expanded beyond painting into installation and increasingly experimental formats, including augmented reality.
Artistic Exploration
The shift was never a deliberate departure from painting, but rather a recognition that some ideas demanded a different language. “Installation allows me to create a dialogue between object, space and viewer,” she explains. “Meaning doesn’t reside in the object itself. It emerges through its relationship with its surroundings and the person encountering it.”
More recently, augmented reality has opened new possibilities. “It allows the work to exist beyond the static surface,” she says. “It becomes something experienced physically and spatially.” Yet even as her practice embraces new technologies, its central concerns remain rooted in the natural world.
“I’ve come to believe that roots are not only inherited. They are formed through adaptation, relationships and time” – Jaee Tee
Ecology has long been a recurring thread throughout her work, intertwined with questions of identity and belonging. Having grown up in the countryside, Tee developed a close relationship with nature from an early age. Today, she finds herself responding to the accelerating pace of environmental change.
“Deforestation is not new,” she says. “What feels different today is the speed and scale at which it is happening.” She points to the limestone mountains of Perak, geological formations that took around 400 million years to form but have largely disappeared within only a few decades of quarrying.
“It is this absurd reality that compels my work,” she says. “Facts and data alone do not always move people, but art can connect on a more human level.” For Tee, art has the ability to make environmental loss tangible — to translate scientific realities into emotional experiences that linger long after viewers leave the gallery.
Creative Collaboration
Her openness to technology reflects the same philosophy. Rather than viewing artificial intelligence or digital tools as threats to artistic practice, she sees them as opportunities for new forms of collaboration. During a recent visit to Berlin, she encountered works that brought together artists, scientists and technologists to explore environmental phenomena in unexpected ways.
One installation translated real earthquake data into physical vibrations through specially designed jackets, allowing visitors to experience seismic activity through their own bodies. “It was a powerful example of how art, science and technology can make invisible environmental phenomena tangible,” she says. “I think we’ll see more collaborations like this in the years ahead.”
That spirit of exploration continues to shape her own journey. A recent residency in Leipzig introduced her to artists, curators and writers whose perspectives have fundamentally shifted the way she thinks about her practice. “It feels like a turning point,” she says. “The work is beginning to evolve in a new direction.”
She is now preparing for an exhibition with Augsburg Contemporary this November, an opportunity that grew out of a conversation in Berlin two years ago. Returning to Europe, she says, feels less like revisiting a destination than continuing an ongoing dialogue.
Like the banyan tree that first captured her imagination, Tee’s practice continues to grow in unexpected directions, extending new roots while remaining connected to where it began. It is perhaps that quiet understanding of belonging — never fixed, always evolving — that gives her work an enduring resonance.
