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View all search resultsPerspectives On… Weaving Threads traces ancestral roots, colonial history
Through ikat, batik and experimental dyeing techniques, a Dutch artist with Indonesian ties explores identity, inheritance and the lingering imprint of colonial histories.
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Interwoven path: Dutch artist Nazif Lopulissa (left) and Studio Sejauh founder Chitra Subyakto pose before a textile work displayed in their joint exhibition, State of Fashion: Perspectives On… Weaving Threads, which runs until Dec. 24, 2025, at Erasmus Huis Jakarta. (JP/Sylviana Hamdani)
T
raditional textiles do not merely serve as articles of clothing but also as living records of cultural memory, identity and inherited wisdom. Each piece is painstakingly woven or drawn by hand with care, often accompanied by quiet prayers for the well-being of its wearer. That sensibility feels increasingly distant in this age of fast fashion.
In an exhibition titled State of Fashion: Perspectives On… Weaving Threads at Erasmus Huis Jakarta in Setiabudi, Dutch visual artist Nazif Lopulissa, in collaboration with fashion designer Chitra Subyakto of Studio Sejauh in Pekalongan, Central Java, revisits this and other traditions through a deeply personal journey shaped by displacement, memory and life between cultures.
“I am a Moluccan from Holland, but also Turkish,” Lopulissa said on Nov. 1, during an interview on the sidelines of the exhibition opening.
“So they do not see me as Indonesian, also not as Dutch and not as Turkish, but as someone in between.”
Born in the central Dutch town of Tiel, the artist was born to a Turkish father and a mother from Maluku, known as the Moluccas during the colonial era. His grandfather once served in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army and migrated to the Netherlands after the war, though he never stopped calling Ambon home.
“My grandfather, when he went to Ambon and came back to Holland, he always brought ikat scarves,” Lopulissa recalled. “And that became the embodiment of home in Ambon for me.”
Years after his grandfather passed away, one of those scarves resurfaced in his studio and prompted a deeper search.
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