A Story of “Batik Indonesia”

An Archipelago – here where I live, Indonesia. For 24 years, I have lived among differences. I met people from different islands. I saw people in different languages, clothes, and customs. These differences are culture. I interpret a culture as an identity or a uniqueness of a country that could not find in another country. This way, I see a culture as a valuable thing. At least, this is what I think now, but it was different before.

I did not use to be aware of our own culture, neither did most of Indonesian. Therefore, we used to disregard one of our precious cultures, that is batik. Batik is a cloth with unique motif that is traditionally made using a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. There are various motif that can be seen in batik according to each region of Indonesia. The most commonly used motifs are flowers, animals, nature, traditional weapon, folklore or people. Batik can be considered as a high culture from its uniqueness as it contains elements of art and has a rich symbolism, moreover, every symbol has its own philosophy.

People used to wear batik only on a certain e...