Born in the Netherlands, Jaarsma went to Indonesia to study at the Institute of Art in Jakarta and Yogyakarta in the 1980s. She has resided in Indonesia ever since. Jaarsma creates garments as a means of exploring how clothing constructs and negotiates personal and group identities. She uses animal skins, batik motifs, embroidered badges of social groups and Indonesian military uniforms. Jaarsma is a co-founder of one of Indonesia’s most influential contemporary art spaces, Cemeti Art House. She has exhibited widely, including

shows in Australia, Vietnam, Italy, Japan and Albania. Her solo exhibition, De meeloper/The follower, was held at the Artoteek, The Hague, in 2006, and her work was featured at Fashion Accidentally, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei in 2007. She was an artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia.