CCA News
CCA Presents the Exhibition *A Lady Found a Culture in Its Cloth: Barack Obama's Mother and Indonesian Batiks*
Posted on Monday, June 8, 2009, by Brenda Tucker
California College of the Arts is pleased to host A Lady Found a Culture in Its Cloth: Barack Obama's Mother and Indonesian Batiks, June 18-21, on CCA's San Francisco campus (1111 Eighth Street, at 16th and Wisconsin). The show will feature 20 large fabrics and two scarves from the batik collection of Ann Dunham, President Barack Obama's late mother. The collection has been in storage for many years and this is a valuable opportunity for the public to see it. The presentation is part of a national tour that is also passing through New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington DC this summer. It is presented jointly by the Embassy of Indonesia in Washington DC, the Consulate General of Indonesia in San Francisco, the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Protocol, and California College of the Arts.
Indonesia is home to the ancient tradition of batik, in which fabric is decorated using a wax-resist dyeing process. Batiks are often intricately patterned and vividly colored, and they come in a wide variety of styles, from classic to contemporary.
"I am honored that San Francisco will get a chance to host this unique and special collection of Indonesian Batiks," said Mayor Gavin Newsom. "The beauty of this collection, as well as its historical significance, will entice San Franciscans of all stripes to visit the exhibition."
The Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to the United States, H. E. Sudjadnan Parnohadiningrat, remarked, "On behalf of the people of Indonesia, I would like to thank the people of San Francisco for the warm welcome extended to the rich culture and heritage of Indonesia, as represented by the Indonesian batik collection of Dr. Ann Dunham. I hope that through such cultural exchange and cooperation, we can strengthen the cordial relations and increase understanding between the people of our two countries."
The San Francisco presentation of the exhibition will also feature selected works by students in the Textiles and Fashion Design programs at California College of the Arts. These works will complement Dunham's collection and indicate some of the contemporary directions this centuries-old art has taken.
Ann Dunham was a textile artist when she was a young woman. She moved to Indonesia in the 1960s with her son, Barack Obama, and over the following decades began amassing a vast collection of the country's vibrant textile arts. Her collecting did not focus on rare or expensive pieces, but rather on contemporary examples that people were actually wearing every day on city and village streets.
The lives of the batik makers also interested Dunham. While earning degrees in anthropology from the University of Hawaii in the 1970s and 1980s, she focused on how to help craftspeople such as the Indonesian batik makers. She earned her doctorate in Yogyakarta in the late 1980s and early 1990s and worked with the Ford Foundation, USAID, and the World Bank, guiding projects that would benefit poor women through micro and small enterprises. She eventually set up microcredit projects all over Indonesia as well as in Pakistan and Kenya. Dunham passed away in 1995.
About California College of the Arts
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts is noted for the interdisciplinarity and breadth of its programs. It offers studies in 20 undergraduate and seven graduate majors in the areas of fine arts, architecture, design, and writing. The college offers bachelor of architecture, bachelor of arts, bachelor of fine arts, master of architecture, master of arts, master of fine arts, and master of business administration degrees. With campuses in San Francisco and Oakland, CCA currently enrolls 1,740 full-time students. Noted alumni include the painters Nathan Oliveira and Raymond Saunders; the ceramicists Robert Arneson, Viola Frey, and Peter Voulkos; the filmmaker Wayne Wang; the conceptual artists David Ireland and Dennis Oppenheim; and the designers Lucille Tenazas and Michael Vanderbyl. For more information about CCA, visit www.cca.edu.
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