Continuing its mission of reimagining retail experiences, CFW Retail Week 2021, in association with One Galle Face and HSBC Sri Lanka, hosted an intimate workshop with famed batik designer Sonali Dharmawardena who showed people what inspires her to create her unique batik.
Discovering the craft
Sonali shared that while she had always loved clothes and loved dressing up, she knew next to nothing about batik and only properly learned about the craft when her father-in-law, the famous batik artist Vipula Dharmawardena, passed away and she was helping organise a memorial exhibition in his name.
Simply put, batik is a form of resist dyeing, where portions of fabric are “sealed” either with wax or other materials and then dyed, with the sealed areas not absorbing the dye it has been placed in. This process is then repeated as required until the final design is reached. Batik uses wax to seal fabric for dyeing, with various techniques then being used to make the batik we all know and love.
Before learning more about the craft putting together this exhibition, Sonali was, in fact, not a fan of batik because as an artist, she couldn’t relate to someone sitting and tracing out someone else’s artwork. She also found the colours being used at the time quite unappealing.
Having found out what batik was and how to use it as a medium, Sonali began to play with the established rules of batik. “The good thing was that I didn’t know much, so I was able to try things,” Sonali shared with the audience. “I learnt the technique, so I could do different things with it. How you put the wax on affects your outcome, so we experimented and questioned, and found this amazing work that comes out of one of the oldest methods of value-adding to fabric.”
The workshop included a show and tell element with Sonali showing her personal batik making tools, including an Indonesian tool called a “tjanting”, which is used for very intricate batiks like that of Javanese tradition (the history of batik goes back thousands of years and Java Island, Indonesia has special UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation) heritage status when it comes to batik. Batik in various forms has also been found to be an integral part of Chinese, Egyptian, Japanese, and Indian cultures as well).
Approaching batik as wearable art
Art is a passion for Sonali. “I’m an artist, not a craftsman,” she shared, adding: “If you look at batik people, they were craftsmen. For me, batik is an art form. A medium, because of the way I’m using it.”
For Sonali, it’s important that each piece be unique and that all her work have a signature style, something she encouraged all designers to develop because in that way, designers become themselves and not a copy of someone else. Discussing her own signature style, Sonali said that though her work is very diverse, some of her trademarks are her strokes and her use of colour. “Fashion carries,” Sonali said, adding: “it’s important for people to recognise it as your own and not a replica of something else.”
Approaching batik as an artist, Sonali explained that her process is very mood-driven, and she makes each piece unique by viewing fabric as her canvas and translating herself into the fabric.
This approach to batik as art carries into Sonali’s marketing, with her customers understanding that each of her pieces is art, a one-off piece, and while there is a common thread that brings overall collections together, each piece is still unique, with Sonali absolutely refusing to duplicate a piece for anyone, even on request.
Balancing creativity with discipline
Sonali shared that while she is an artist who is heavily emotionally driven, discipline has played a huge part in her life, from attending a convent school to being raised by a disciplinarian father, and that this sense of discipline still affects how she works today, sharing that especially with commissioned work, she aims to deliver a piece a few days in advance to be sure she can finish in time.
When struggling with inspiration, Sonali shared that something that often works for her is a quick break to escape the pressure, like a drive somewhere, or reading or sitting by a river, to help her reset and get a fresh perspective.
