Textile Stories and Legends

2020 – 2022

Textiles are among the most important and visible genres of the cultural heritage of Indonesia. The production of textiles is often connected with the enactment of spiritual beliefs and reinforces certain social fabrics and obligations. This project entails collecting textile stories told within living memories, personal stories of weavers and batik makers, and mythologies related to textiles from the archipelago of Indonesia. This project is a collaboration between the Tracing Patterns Foundation with the Fakultas Industri Kreatif at the University of Ciputra in Surabaya. This collaboration began in the Fall semester of 2020, involving students in the fashion and textile class. The class is divided into groups and each group chose a textile to study the pattern, technique, and its cultural significance through literature research as well as an interview with a weaver / dyer / collector/ scholar. The information gathered will be part of an online Indonesian Textile Stories and Legends database, created by and hosted at the Ciputra University. For final project, the student use the information as inspiration to create new textile design and fashion.