SMU Komunitas Indonesia
Official Website
Welcome to
Batik Workshop
In alignment with our club’s mission, which is to introduce arts and culture of Indonesia, SMU Komunitas Indonesia (SMUKI) organized a Batik Workshop on Friday, 5 September 2014 at Singapore Management University (SMU). This two-hour workshop was open to the member of public where SMU students paying discounted price sponsored by the Arts and Cultural Fraternity of SMU while non-SMU students paying the full price.
As Batik is one of Indonesia’s interestingly unique and highly developed art forms, SMUKI decided to organize the second batik workshop after a brief hiatus for three years. For this event, we invited two talented instructors from Singapore Arts School to teach a total number of 30 participants from different nationalities, such as, UK, Thailand, Korea and China, the art of creating Batik.
In the workshop, each participant was given a piece of cloth and pencil to draw the outline of the design pattern he/she wanted to make. They could choose to draw from the provided patterns or to sketch their own designs following their creativity.
After finished drawing, the next step was to apply the wax along the drawn lines and ornaments on the fabric. The fabric was usually stretched on a frame and the wax afterwards was applied using canting.
Canting is a special tool to apply melted wax in batik-making process.This technique of applying this wax requires meticulousness and patience. If hasty, the wax will be splattered outside the outline of the pattern.
When the wax was applied and dried, the fabric was ready to be dyed. With a wide array of colours available to decorate the fabric, students are able to to explore their imagination by carefully selecting a mixture of colours to be applied.
Having their batik pattern coloured, students were to wait for a while to let the colours be fully absorbed by the fabric. Traditionally, the final phase was to remove the wax by immersing the batik cloth in boiling hot water for a few moments. The last step, however, was excluded in this workshop due to safety issues of the participants. In spite of not removing the wax, students were came away with sense of wonder over their result, effort and patience put into the creation of their batik cloth. The designs of batik motifs are timeless and they are source of inspiration for proficient fabric designers who want to share the beauty of batik across the world.
Watch this video to find out the testaments from our Batik Workshop's participants!
* SMUKI Batik Workshop was also being featured in GIV (Global Indonesian Voices). Check the news here