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Caroline Rika Winata: On art, fashion and her Chinese heritage
For textile artist and designer Caroline Rika Winata, challenges in life go beyond climbing the ranks in the fashion world, as she must also face discrimination over her Chinese heritage.
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Tie-dye designs: Models present creations from designer Caroline Rika Winata's collection for her Wiru clothing brand in Yogyakarta. (Courtesy of Wiru/-)
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fashion event featuring textile artist and fashion designer Caroline Rika Winata’s latest collection has showcased her experimental abstract style and use of the woodblock printing technique to create motifs of the Ginkgo Biloba leaf on ramie cotton fabric.
The collection, designed for her Wiru clothing brand, is called “Kekuatan” (Power). The fashion show, comprising eight looks, was staged recently at Ambarrukmo Plaza in Yogyakarta.
“Ginkgo Biloba is a symbol of power because it was the only flora that survived when Hiroshima in Japan was bombed in World War II. It still grows well to date,” the 42-year-old said at her house in Yogyakarta.
The woodblock printing technique is a skill Rika picked up at the Dastkari Haat crafts bazaar at Dilli Haat, India, in January. The trip to India opened her mind to Indian textiles.
Best known as a tie-dye and batik artist in Yogyakarta, Rika, who started her career in 2001, treats textiles as a canvas on which she “paints” beautiful tie-dye motifs with bright, saturated colors.
In Yogyakarta, she regularly holds tie-dye and batik-training gatherings. She recently shared knowledge about making an ecofriendly paste from a mixture of palm sugar, alum and glutinous rice flour to color batik in a workshop on batik simbut.
She attributes her love for textiles, which she was exposed to at an early age, to her mother, who was a tailor.
