Artists, scholars and curators
Indonesian artist Agus Ismoyo, from a family of Solo batik makers, and Pratt-trained American artist Nia Fliam have collaborated since 1985. Their batik studio in Yogyakarta, Brahma Tirta Sari ("creativity is the source of all knowledge"), translates the visual language of traditional Javanese batik into contemporary work rooted in nature.
Designer Benny Adrianto has been exploring Indonesia’s cultural diversity through collaborations with artisans across the country, transforming traditional crafts into contemporary works. Benny combines materials and traditions from different regions, such as Sulawesi bark cloth and Solo calligraphy, in order to create contemporary designs while simultaneously preserving their cultural meaning.
Shri Krishnendu Bag is an artist, educator and master artisan with more than four decades in India's heritage crafts. A Visva-Bharati graduate, he taught design at Kala Bhavana for 19 years, carrying forward the Tagorean art philosophy. Today he leads public masterclasses across India in natural dyes and freehand batik.
Sushobhan Adhikary is an artist, art historian and conservator, and former Curator of the Kala Bhavana Museum, Visva-Bharati. He spent many years conserving Tagore's paintings at Rabindra-Bhavana and has written on Rabindranath's art since 1983, winning the Ananda Puraskar for Ronger Rabindranath (Tagore of Colours), co-authored with Ketaki Kushari Dyson.
Oroon Das is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, scenographer, and designer whose practice moves fluidly across theatre, movement, installation, costume, and visual arts. Drawing inspiration from Indian performance traditions, craft practices, and contemporary design, his work explores the relationship between body, space, material, and memory. He has collaborated with leading theatre practitioners, museums, and cultural institutions in India and abroad, creating immersive performances and exhibition designs. His interdisciplinary approach brings together storytelling, scenography, and material culture to create new dialogues between the performing and visual arts.
Rudolf Smend is a passionate batik collector and the owner of Galerie Smend in Cologne. He was first introduced to batik in Yogyakarta, Central Java, in 1973. His gallery, which exhibits the work of international textile artists, recently celebrated its 42nd anniversary. Smend has edited and published numerous books on silk painting and batik, among them Batik: Javanese and Sumatran Batiks from Courts and Palaces, Rudolf G. Smend Collection (2000) and Batik: 75 Selected Masterpieces, The Rudolf G. Smend Collection (2006).
Dr Maria Wronska-Friend is a social anthropologist and museum curator specialising in Southeast Asian textiles, and an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. Her research traces the global influence of Javanese batik, from European decorative arts to textile traditions in Japan, Ghana, Bengal and Aboriginal Australia. In Santiniketan, she studied the Indonesian textiles Rabindranath Tagore brought back from Java and Bali in 1927, and documented Bengal's contemporary batik practice. Her books include Javanese Batik to the World (Jakarta, 2016). She has curated or advised on more than ten major textile exhibitions in Australia and Poland.
Peter Lee is an independent researcher, and the Founding Curator of the NUS Baba House – a historical house museum managed by the National University of Singapore. Since 1998 he has curated exhibitions and authored essays and publications on various aspects of Peranakan heritage. His textile- and fashion-related work includes Sarong Kebaya (Peranakan Museum, 2011) and a book on the subject (2014). In 2016, he co-curated Singapore, Sarong Kebaya and Style at the Fukuoka Art Museum and the Shoto Museum in Tokyo. Three seasons of The Mark of Empire, a documentary series in which he features as the series’ host, were broadcast by Channel News Asia, Singapore, in 2020, 2022 and 2026. He also manages a family collection of textiles and 19th century photography.
Sudhi Ranjan Mukherjee is an artist and designer based in Santiniketan. Born in Chandannagore in 1957, he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in painting from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, and was a National Cultural Scholar at Kala Bhavana under Dinkar Kaushik. For over three decades (1983–2017), he taught painting and design at Visva-Bharati, where he also created alpanas for the university's festivals and designed stagecraft, costumes and ornaments for Tagore's dance dramas. He has led workshops on alpana, sara painting and mask-making in India and the US, including at a Tagore festival in New Jersey, and exhibited widely since 1981.
