IBU NESTI — SARONG RELAWATI BANG IRENG

Ibu Nesti
Born 1987, Batang, Indonesia

SARONG RELAWATI BANG IRENG (2025)
100% Cotton, synthetic dyes
Hand-drawn wax resist on machine-woven cotton
218 × 112 cm

A bird, a flying fish or a floating leaf? This luscious botanical batik keeps you guessing.

This densely worked sarong in the two-colour relawati style conceals birds, insects and other creatures carefully abstracted amongst flowers, vines and a tangle of foliage. Relawati draws its name from the Javanese root rela — willingness, surrender — and describes a mode of batik drawn freely, without geometric templates, giving each piece an organic, improvisational quality all its own.

Against a kepyur background — a scattered fill of tiny granular marks whose name evokes the act of sprinkling — Ibu Nesti has conjured a world of intertwining plants and creatures that speaks to the connected nature of all living things. The bubble-like quality of the background, combined with motifs that read as both bird and fish, opens a productive ambiguity: are we in a forest canopy or an aquatic realm? The badan becomes a space that is neither one nor the other, an imaginative world where creatures from different realms might meet and play.

The badan is bordered by udang samaran shrimp abstracted into sinuous, wave-like curves that echo the aquatic spirit of the cloth.

The kepala features a striking buketan arrangement rising from keladi (caladium) leaves into magnificent blooms and long fronds of lancur (pandan-like leaves, evocative of a rooster’s long plumage). This is set against a fill of krokotan (purslane) — a small, resilient succulent used in traditional foods and medicines. Arranged here in almost starfish-like formations, the krokotan seems to sway as if drifting in a current, taking our imaginations somewhere new.

Ibu Nesti

Ibu Nesti learned to batik at the age of twelve from her mother, renowned artist Ibu Warni. She loves making relawati and the tambal patchwork design, filling each section according to her mood at the time. Batik is a part-time practice for Ibu Nesti, who also runs two businesses from home, raises a family and holds a teaching qualification. A creative soul, she has a natural way with both children and with batik cloth.