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 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.