Weeks after launching her largest exhibition in the Netherlands—her country of birth—Mella Jaarsma invited me to her home in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Despite nearly four decades of a practice spanning costumes, performance, painting, and drawing, her work remains largely absent from Dutch institutions. Deeply intertwined with Indonesian life and politics, her art can appear esoteric to a European art gaze that is only recently beginning to re-engage with the Southeast Asian nation they once colonized less than 100 years ago.

Jaarsma told me that since moving to Indonesia in the mid-1980s, her artistic interests have been irrevocably tethered to the archipelago’s social and political landscape. At the time, her father was stationed in Jakarta for work, and she spent a summer there visiting her parents while still a fledgling art student. The stark contrast between her Dutch upbringing and everyday life in Indonesia struck her immediately, prompting her to return to pursue her final academic year at the Jakarta Art Institute. The move ultimately became permanent.

Her early research focused on the concept of shadow in Indonesian culture, which stems from the ancient tradition of wayang kulit, Javanese shadow puppetry. The motif holds significance beyond mere entertainment, serving as a medium for spiritual practice, philosophical inquiry, and social commentary. To explore these concepts more thoroughly, Jaarsma left the metropolis of Jakarta in 1985 for Yogyakarta, a city steeped in Javanese arts and cultural heritage, where she has lived and worked ever since.