The ‘Dutch wife’, a body-length bamboo-mesh bolster or pillow that is used in tropical climates to keep cool at night, originated in the Dutch colonies in Indonesia but is still largely unknown in the Netherlands. The name refers to the sarcastic title English traders gave to Indonesian women who were married to Dutch traders. Through her archival and field research, South Korean artist Aram Lee wanted to return the Dutch wife to its historical roots, symbolically reversing the process of colonisation and emancipating the object. By deconstructing the Dutch wife’s original production principles and applying them to a series of blankets, the object is freed from its original, colonial context.
