THE BATIK ADVENTURE
My journey to the ancient city of yogyakarta
Batik
We can trace the origins of batik in ancient Egypt and parts of Africa. But the apotheosis of batik came in the island of Java.In Yogyakarta, a very old city-kingdom is where I discovered batik.
The word batik is Javanese in origin. It may either come from the Javanese word amba ('to write') and titik ('dot'), or may derive from a hypothetical Proto-Austronesian root *beCík ('to tattoo').
Indonesia is a mystical land in Southeast Asia. The world’s largest archipelagic state and the most heavily forested region on earth after the Amazon.
What struck me the most was the cultural richness and the kindness of the people. I traveled in Indonesia for a scholarship. My encounter with batik begun by accident.
You know how some moments of our lives are engraved to our memory with unusual clarity. My journey with batik in Indonesia has many of these moments. The beginning was one of them...
Athens 2007. I was in my university, the Athens School of Fine Arts. I was walking in my painting studio when i noticed Oresteia, standing in front of the door of the professors office. She was reading something. I stood next to her and started reading. It was an announcement from the embassy of the Republic of Indonesia offering a scholarship to study in Indonesia. As soon as I read it, I looked at her and said:
-I am going.
And I did. It was the Darmasiswa scholarship, offering classes on Indonesian language, dance, puppet theater and... batik. At that point, I didn't t know what batik was. After some web searching, I decided that it was going to be my application subject. The truth was that I wanted to travel to Indonesia to start my field research on shamanism.
Next was the application procedure. A health certificate was necessary. That was an issue, since I have a chronic condition. You know what they say when you want something very bad that the universe conspires for you to get it… well I don’t think that the universe really bothers with us but in this case things worked out. I was accepted despite my condition.
A street vendor preparing food in the small street next to my first residence in Yogyakarta, in Jalan (street) Flamboyan. Photo from personal archive.
In my studio in Yogyakarta working on my batik “Thoughts of structures“. Photo from personal archive.
Close up photo of my batik “Approaching the Corpus Hermeticum with new eyes”. You can see the different feeling and result that an artwork has, when it is dyed and the fabric surface is visible. Photo from personal archive.
A batik painting has unique texture. The colours and the base layer are one and the same, contrary to other painting techniques like oil and acrylic, where the paint is applied on top of the base layer (a primed canvas for example). Of course each technique has its merits and properties. In the case of batik painting, the combination of the soft fabric texture, the intense colours and the pictorial elements, gives a feeling of gentleness.
“ Having started painting with batik it felt natural to do some research on the materials used in this technique. The following photos are part of this research.”
Unfinished traditional batiks. Batiks from the areas of Yogyakarta and Surakarta are minimal in colour, usually in earthy browns, reds and blue. The white fabric in the upper corner is in the first stage of the process. The yellowish designs are actually actually the wax that masks the fabric. Photograph from my personal archive.
“Batik painting is a long tradition in Indonesia and it is exercised mostly by women.”
Here we can observe the variations in style and colour palette in different regions of Indonesia.
Traditional batik design from inland Jawa. image rights: Alteaven
Batik from the Semarang area, Jawa. Unknown artist. circa 1880
Traditional batik design from coastal Jawa. image rights: Alteaven
“The techniques, symbolism and culture surrounding hand-dyed cotton and silk garments known as Indonesian Batik permeate the lives of Indonesians from beginning to end: infants are carried in batik slings decorated with symbols designed to bring the child luck, and the dead are shrouded in funerary batik. Batik is dyed by proud craftspeople who draw designs on fabric using dots and lines of hot wax, which resists vegetable and other dyes and therefore allows the artisan to colour selectively by soaking the cloth in one colour, removing the wax with boiling water and repeating if multiple colours are desired.
Source: UNESCO”
Old postcard showing a Javanese couple wearing batik sarongs.