Fashioned by Women: Indonesian Clothing presents dyed and handwoven attire made across multiple cultures in the Indonesian archipelago since the nineteenth century. This focus exhibition explores three interrelated lines of inquiry: the women artists who created the textiles, the central role of trade and exchange within and beyond Indonesia, and the changing ways people make and wear these garments as fashionable dress.
Scholarship on Indonesian textiles often includes only a cursory mention that women made the cloths, with even fewer acknowledgments of named women artists. This focus exhibition calls attention to the women whose artistry, wisdom, and expertise have contributed to the production and global significance of Indonesian textiles.
Fashioned by Women: Indonesian Clothing also intervenes in discourses on fashion that historically excluded dress practices in the Global South, which were more often framed as craft and traditional textiles. Change is a defining characteristic of fashion. Indonesian clothing is dynamic, changing over time. As women have innovated the making and meaning of Indonesian clothing, this exhibition situates these garments as examples of fashion.
This focus exhibition features Indonesian textiles recently donated by Ann Harrison to the Eskenazi Museum of Art's collection in memory of Wade C. “Rusty” Harrison II.
