Title: Difficult time
2011-2013
Work on paper by Sabine Bolk
Batiks by KUB Srikandi, desa Jeruk, region Rembang, Indonesia
The work ‘Difficult Time’ was shown the first time in the exhibition ‘The journey to Batik – Day & Night‘ from 16 December 2018 until 20 January 2019 at De Nieuwe Veste in Breda (NL). The exhibition and title were inspired by this work and the history shared with it.
In 2010 I started making this work to research two Batik stories. First, the stories about Indo-European Batik entrepreneurs on Java active between 1880 and 1940. In the stories about these makers is written how their designs combined traditional Javanese motifs with images from Europe taken from fashion magazines and fairytales. These entrepreneurs made, or ordered, only the designs. The Javanese pembatiks made it into an actual batik. What got lost in translation during this process, created a whole new style within Batik.
Second story is that of the batiks made during the Japanese occupation of the former Dutch East Indies (1942-1945). Although it ended the almost 350 years Dutch colonisation of Indonesia, it started a new era which was for many a difficult time. During this time a new organisation called ‘Djawa Hokokai’ was implemented. This organisation put businesses to work to support the Japanese warfare. The batik industry was one of them. There was hardly any cotton available, so according to documented stories, it got batikked in much detail to keep the pembatiks working. The idea was that as long as you were working, you were safe. These very full batiks later got the name ‘Hokokai’.
The most used design in ‘Hokokai batik’ was apparently ’pagi-sore’ (day and night). A pagi-sore design consist of two halves divided by an oblique line in the middle. This type of batik can be worn as two sarongs for morning and afternoon, making it very sustainable. The two halves are also divided in their motifs displaying duality. To create my own pagi-sore design I based it on the work of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). His Sunflower paintings are seen as typical Dutch, but Vincent’s inspiration came from France and above all from Japanese Art.
In the design I combined Van Gogh’s Sunflowers with birds that would visit her garden. The painting was traced on paper and sent to Indonesia. There it was made into two batiks by batikworkshop KUB Srikandi.
In 2013 the batiks were sent to the Netherlands. The final batiks show nicely what the ‘lost in translation’ entailed. The Dutch startling transformed into an Indonesian Spotted dove (Tekukur biasa). The faded sunflowers were turned into blossoming lotuses.
This work was also exhibited at the ‘Masa depan Batik’ exhibition held at Erasmushuis in Jakarta (ID) in 2023 and Indonesia House in Amsterdam (NL) in 2025.
Read more about this work also on my blog De reis naar Batik in the post ‘Difficult Time‘