Brightly coloured and patterned batik is synonymous with Indonesia. But in the hands of Yogyakarta muralist Dias Prabu the medium becomes an expressive platform as he pours imagination and allegory, animals and text into spontaneous contemporary drawings made with wax on fabric. Often featuring symbols of national pride, the works are his way of making a contribution to the national dialogue around issues as diverse as environmental degradation, the extinction of species and the values Indonesia should follow as a complex land of over 17,000 islands with a large, ethnically diverse population.
 
Indonesia takes national values very seriously, enshrining them in its new constitution in 1945, in a moral code called Pancasila. This literally means ‘five pillars’ - monotheism, a just and civilised humanity, a unified Indonesia, democracy and social justice.
 
Dias Prabu’s journey to batik was circuitous. In 2014, not long out of art school, he won a national competition for mural painting. Part of the prize was to paint a mural on a wall of the National Gallery of Indonesia in Jakarta, where it remains today. His mural painting took him to cities in Java, Aceh, East Kalimantan and to the northern parts of Indonesia.
 
In 2017 he joined a Teaching Artists program, travelling to remote Natuna Island to work with school children on murals that investigated local stories, ideas and philosophies. It was there he began the Kultura Project, with a concept of Pendidikan Mural Pancasila, or Pancasila Mural Education, a play on the mandatory Pancasila Moral Education (PMP) implemented by schools during Soeharto’s New Order.
 
In 2018 Dias undertook a residency at Kampung Batik Manding Siberkreasi, an organisation which draws on the philosophical basis of traditional batik to spread messages of harmony. It was here Dias had the idea of transferring his mural designs onto batik, learning to draw rapidly and skilfully with hot wax via a process called canting.
 
Dias’s batiks at 16albermarle comprise two series. The first deals with traditional animals of Java, many either extinct or facing extinction. In the second, he explores childhood memories and the stories told to him by his grandfather. Although addressed to the Indonesian people, the moral and environmental messages in these batiks speak to people of every country.

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