Japanese artist Kei Imazu, who lives and works in Indonesia, has drawn inspiration from the country’s rich history and mythology for much of her career. Her first solo exhibition at Museum MACAN, The Sea is Barely Wrinkled, is an exploration of Indonesia’s independence struggle, ecology and memory - at once dreamlike and grounded in archival research. Traditional oil painting techniques meet metalwork, digital technology and 3D printing to create an exhibition that embodies the fluidity and cyclicality of time and space in Javanese culture. At the heart of the exhibition is the 1629 shipwreck of the imperial Dutch East India Company (VOC)’s flagship, the Batavia. Imazu expands this historical incident into a symbol of the failure of colonial power in the face of nature, one which ripples into the ecological and political future of Jakarta. “I was drawn to how history isn’t just something written in books here—it lives in the architecture, the land, the stories people tell,” said Imazu in a conversation with STIR.

The exhibition borrows its title from Mr. Palomar, a 1983 novel by Italian author Italo Calvino. Imazu sources elements from a wide array of sources—books, Jakarta’s archives, oral history, folklore and climate forecasts—to create what she calls “a temporal collage—where nothing is stable and everything is in flux”. The titular canvas at the centre of the exhibition space is a surreal testament to the centrality of juxtaposition in Imazu’s work—the painting combines dreamy underwater scenes with architectural elements, animals and broken household items, all dwarfed by the giant skeleton hands sweeping over them. The multiplication of meaning through collage is supported by the installation design, which places the iron and fabric sculpture Nyai Roro Kidul, depicting the deity Dewi Kadita, between the central painting and viewers. The blue canvas peeks out from the negative space in the metal silhouette of the Queen of the Southern Sea in Javanese mythology, creating a dialogue between historic record and myth.

Further into the space, Slanted Portico of the Batavia Fort depicts a segment of a ruin, once a palace for the VOC’s Governor General, now struggling to stand as it faces the recreated prow of its namesake, also a ruin. Flanked by vivid paintings of mythological figures, traditional processions and the local harbour, the political message of these pieces is clear; however, Imazu pushes further. “I’m not aiming for historical illustration, but rather trying to unearth forgotten or submerged layers and recontextualise them within a contemporary visual language. It’s about finding echoes between past and present,” she said. The ocean becomes this temporal link in the 3D-printed artwork The Land Lost to The Sea. Modern structures and society rest uneasily atop the surface of an ocean, dwarfed by mysterious abstract animals and amorphous figures within it. Rusted artefacts are displayed below, a reminder of the ever-shortening distance between city and ocean floor. Imazu’s depiction of the destructive power of the ocean, merging art and technology, turns from an anti-colonial message to an urgent environmental one, of particular concern in the island nation of Indonesia, vulnerable to flooding, droughts and heatwaves.

Through this overlapping, Imazu creates an uncomfortable throughline between Indonesia’s colonial history and its urbanised future. The character of the ocean and the deities that animate it remain ambiguous and ambivalent in the story Imazu tells, even as they are central to it. “In the context of former colonies, the sea holds the memory of trauma: slave routes, colonial conquest, extractive economies. But it also offers possibilities: of escape, of transformation, of alternative cosmologies,” said Imazu, discussing the significance of the ocean as a symbol in postcolonial art. The ocean, in this exhibition and its place in Javanese mythology, becomes a reminder to look beyond the immediate and anthropocentric to the complex continuities that lie beneath.

‘Kei Imazu: The Sea is Barely Wrinkled’ is on view at Museum MACAN in Jakarta, Indonesia, from May 24 – October 5, 2025.