Palimpsest of Narratives
2018
Fotogramm on Baryta paper
18 × 24 cm each
Exhibition:
A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories III, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, 2016
Found in traditional Indonesian textile, Batik is an old dyeing technique that uses wax and natural color. The tradition of ornamenting textile through Batik can be found in various regions such as Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and Oceania. However, the Batik craft culture developed in Java, Indonesia especially boasts a long tradition as well as a highly developed technique. The patterns found in the Batik sometimes embody abstracted or geometricized nature, situations that give a glimpse of the folkloristic life of the ordinary people, or narrative elements that portray the region’s culture. The work Palimpsest of Narratives abstractly weaves Indonesia’s Batik patterns with various traditional patterns of other cultures through a photographic collage method, namely the black and white photogram. Through this process of intersection and overlapping, new meanings and texts are born, shedding a different light to the original aesthetics and the literary information each pattern holds.
