As part of Portland Textile Month, we are excited to exhibit Exist / Resist, hand-drawn batik textiles by Gaby Tirta in the windows of Fumi. Gaby’s pieces are made with wax resist and natural dyes sourced from Indonesia and foraged or grown in the Pacific Northwest, connecting the two regions through traditional craft and personal storytelling.
Gaby Tirta is a Chinese Indonesian American artist and designer working in Portland who learned the craft of batik and natural dyeing from artisans in Ubud, Bali. Batik has always traveled. It moved through a history of trade, colonization, and changes with every crossing and landing. Her work asks what survives migration, what stays hidden and what gets revealed, decided by intention and accident in the process.
We see a lot of our own incense practice in the way Gaby approaches batik. We share a curiosity about lineage and what it means to learn a traditional craft, while also developing a personal relationship to it. Both ask us to consider what is inherited, what is transformed, and what becomes our own through the act of making. There is something especially generative about these two practices, shaped by different histories and places, coming together within Fumi.
The exhibition runs Oct 8th - 31st. It will be on display in our storefront window making it available to view all hours of all days without a ticket or invitation.
If you’d like to learn more about Gaby’s work, join us on Thursday October 15th 5-8p for a reception and artist talk. Tea and snacks will be served.
Development of this work is supported by a grant from Regional Arts & Culture Council.
About the Artist
Gaby Tirta is an interdisciplinary artist and designer whose layered visual language draws on her Chinese Indonesian heritage and third-culture experience. Her practice flows through traditional materiality, contemporary design, and public space. Tirta irreverently explores a wide-ranging set of themes, from assimilation and belonging to desire and beauty, asking what it means to be present as an Asian American woman in art and in the world.
She studied batik and natural dye techniques at Threads of Life in Ubud, Bali. Both her community-based projects and studio work have been and continue to be supported and commissioned by the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and she is a 2027 artist-in-residence at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.