Women from Adonara and Lembata in Nusa Tenggara along with those from Toraja and Mamasa in Sulawesi will be at the Textile Museum in Jakarta on Saturday to showcase their contributions to Indonesia’s rich traditional fabrics.

These women have a lot in common — they’re the direct breadwinners in their households, and they live on meagre means. Most importantly, they tirelessly contribute to the country’s rich mosaic of traditional fabrics.

They will come to Jakarta for the exhibition “Sole Oha,” organized by Toraja Melo, which focuses on improving the welfare of Indonesian women through the revitalization of the art of weaving, alongside organizations like Wastra Indonesia, Biru Terong Initiative and the Empowerment of Female Breadwinners (Pekka).

The exhibition, running until Dec. 17, features, among other things, the best of Lamaholot cuisine, the screening of documentaries on the art of weaving and a chance for visitors to talk to the weavers themselves.

Somewhat at odds with the commercial side of weaving, they seek to elevate the status of the weavers, the women who work by instinct. It can take them a week or even years to create and perfect a piece, such as a hand-woven sarong.

“Usually, it’s the women who work and actually, weaving is not always their primary work,” Bhimanto Suwastoyo from Wastra Indonesia told The Jakarta Post.

One of his concerns is the lack of acknowledgment of the weavers — as singular figures who deserve their due. “At the end of the day, their names are the only ones out there,” he said, referring to designers who incorporate weaving into their products, “the names of the weavers aren’t.”

Their work — depending on the type of weaving, like the traditional tenun woven fabric or ikat, the latter of which, according to Bhimanto, is popular in Lamanta — consists of a grueling process, from picking the cottonand separating seeds from the fibers, to dyeing and drying it out, before producing the yarn to weave.

The plight of the weavers is not so much their dwindling basic income as it is the lack of acknowledgment of their products as Indonesian artefacts, as proud members of that long, kaleidoscopic list.

Dinny Jusuf, the founder of Toraja Melo, which began work in 2008 and which had an exhibition at the Textile Museum in 2012, said her organization wanted a “better life for the weavers and the rejuvenation and the preservation of hand-woven textiles.”

A piece of woven cloth can, she said, cost millions. “We need to perceive hand-woven textiles as more valuable than branded items,” she said, adding that she and Toraja Melo’s cofounder, her sister Nina Jusuf, wanted all the works to be recognized as Indonesia’s own.

What they focus on is finding a sustainable business model. Formerly a banker at Citibank and the general secretary of the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan), she sought inspiration from Ghandi’s Swadeshi movement and its credo. “You wear what you weave, you eat what you plant,” she said.

Specifically, Dinny, having lobbied numerous institutions like the Indonesia Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf), is working toward an initiative for the people of these areas to run their own cotton farms.

Considering the duration of the production and each of the areas’ minimum wage, Dinny said the economic worth of these fabrics wasn’t the primary concern for the women who wove them. “Their concern is how much of the yard they use,” she said. Therefore, the business logic runs counter to factory-made, cheaper, mass-produced textiles.

The rejuvenation, which extends to the preservation of the art of weaving, reflects the locals’ perception of it. It also reflects the uncertain nature of the works’ place in their homeland.

Nani Zulminarni of Pekka, whose female-empowering work stretches across Indonesia, has campaigned to turn the woven cloth into the norm. “In each Pekka meeting in Adonara, they have to wear a sarong. If not, they have to pay.”

Since there are more than 2,000 women, there are more than 2,000 hand-woven sarongs there. “It then became a trend,” she says.

Nani said the thing that motivated women to still do this is was cultural values.

“So for instance, the weaving [patterns] on these two islands are still an instrument of the adat [traditions]. To be given a woven sarong is a big honor. That also cements the women’s social status, especially if it serves as a family heirloom. There’s the economic factor, too” Nani said.

“To us, a woven cloth can cost Rp30 million or Rp40 million, but to have these women there present it [as a dowry, among other things] is a huge honor for them.”

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