Week 1 - Patung Project

*Highlight*

The Patung Project

Is an initiative by Taylors University treasuring Malaysia Traditional Art & Crafts. Taking the elements and characteristics of culture and ethnicity to celebrate the richness of Malaysia's Culture and Heritage.

The PATUNG PROJECT will be inspired by the diversity of art and crafts, to help elevate Malaysia as a tourist preferred destination with Malaysia's uniqueness and diverse arts & crafts.

Projecft Objectives

To promote Malaysia Tourism and celebrate the diversity of culture and heritage in Malaysia to the rest of the world. To bring Malaysia unique Arts & Crafts Heritage and knowledge to the global stage. Ensuring Malaysia heritage is being preserved. To bring out the richness of the cultural & historical backgrounds of Malaysia arts & crafts by involving traditions that have been around for generations.

Here's the link to view my flipbook:

Flipbook

Introduction

Hello to whoever's reading this! This time I'm going to be sharing with you a project that I had been working on in the past two months. For the project, my classmates and I were assigned to do research on our assigned art craft as well as implement the art craft technique within our designs. The most exciting part of the project is the fact that it's a collaboration with Barbie. So, we had to produce our collections on Barbie dolls!

Every student was assigned with a different art craft, for instance, Tekat, Nyonya Beading, Chaligraphy, and Henna. My assigned art craft is Tekat embroidery. I was kind of excited about it because the traditional art craft was originated from my own state, Perak, Malaysia.

before I'm gonna share with you some information about Tekat, I'd like to introduce myself first as a designer so that you'll get a better idea of where I get my inspiration from and how I approach fashion in daily life. For me personally, the most important source of inspiration are myself, my emotions, and my personality as well as music. I think music is essential for me and I can't live without it. It really influences my personality and how I genuinely feel and I would project my emotions from music into my artworks.

If you aren't familiar with Tekat maybe you want to keep reading this.

Tekat is a form of embroidery on cloth, usually, velvet, using gold threads whereby shapes and patterns are formed by stitching the gold threads over a core of medium-thickness pre-cut papers or it's also known as (mempulur).

Today, this Malay art of embroidery still lives on but only in a few locations. Almost all practitioners of Tekat are to be found in the royal town of Kuala Kangsar, Perak.

The embroidery would usually be used on ceremonial items for weddings, engagements, births, and other important events.

The origins and development of tekat are directly linked to the use of clothing and equipment of royal or palace families.

The early development of the art of embroidery can be traced to the early 15th century, during the glory days of the Sultan of Malacca.

So within the royal family Tekat Embroidery can be used to decorate clothes and household items such as curtains, cushions, table cloths, and bedsheets.

Here I'm sharing with you all of the basic tools that you need to do tekat embroidery.

Here are some basic elements that are used for traditional tekat embroidery. There three types of elements which are floral, fauna and geometric shape. 

The geometric shape is usually preferred because it's so much simpler and easier to work with.

Now we are gonna talk about how I'm going to innovate the traditional practice into my own version of Tekat Embroidery.

So in order to do so, I'm still gonna keep the traditional technique that is normally used to do the Tekat Embroidery  because that is what makes Tekat different than any other embroideries. For example, I'm still gonna be using 'mempulur' or the pre-cut cardboard to do the embroidery which is the usual or the original way of doing the Malay Tekat Embroidery.

So, I would like to focus more on the elements of Tekat art itself rather than the application process. Because I feel like when you innovate something we don't necessarily have to turn it into something completely different but to improve the original practice especially when you're working with a traditional art craft for sure we don't want to change the tradition because the main agenda is to preserve the tradition and not changing it. 

I found it a lot easier and effective to start developing a new concept and ideas if I started off by breaking down the core aspects of the Tekat Embroidery. 

By knowing all these characteristics of Tekat that's when I can start thinking of ways to advance the Tekat embroidery design.

Design Development 1

For the design, I tried to explore with different types of flowers such as violet and cherry blossom to give a fresh look to the embroidery because I personally have never seen anyone who uses cherry blossom in Tekat Embroidery design because when we're talking about the tradition of course people tend to reuse the same element over and over again. Using And exploring different types of flowers as one of the elements within the design is an interesting way to innovate the traditional practice. 

However, I still will further develop the flower design and try to explore more on the local flower like hibiscus or orchids.

Next, I also try to mix and match the floral patterns with geometric shapes such as circles, squares, and triangles. I got the idea to do this design is by looking up for contemporary art style in painting like this one. I think by implementing basic shapes and elements within. Design with the right balance can create a really interesting outcome.

But I still will need the approval and opinions from the Tekat expert during the next meeting because I don't want to change the tradition although I'm innovating the traditional craft.

Now let's take a look at my collection ideas.

When the lectures told us that each of us will be assigned to do a traditional art craft and implement the traditional practice within our collection using our own innovative solution to receive an authentic result in order to preserve the traditional practice,  the first thing that crossed my mind was to do something that represents who I am as a designer.

So this is the mood board. I wanted to do something that is empowered and something that shows a sense of boldness and I think I use these two words a lot when describing my preferred vibe and energy that I always want to bring along within my artwork. Although the images kind of representing something that's very classy and yet it is also very fearless and aI hope you also can feel the same by looking at this imagery.

This is the concept board.  the concept is to do something that is quite elegant but in a bold manner if that makes sense. I also want to bring a sense of punk energy within the collection and that will lead to the kind of silhouette and color which I'm gonna show you the sketch that I did after this. the most important aspects that I use when coming out with concept ideas are elegant, bold, empowering, and a little bit of punk-inspired to achieve a stronger outcome.

In terms of silhouette, I wanna do something that is quite puffy to give a sense of the punk look and I'm not even sure puffy is the right term to describe it but that's the main word I have in my head when I'm designing tye collection that — I want a really puffy skirt. speaking off the puffy skirt, in terms of fabrics, of course, my main fabrics are gonna be gonna velvet fabric since the collection is inspired by Tekat Embroidery and tulle fabric to achieve the big or puffy silhouette that I want. since this is the second semester I just wanna experiment with different types of fabrics like tulle because I never worked with tulle before and I was kind of excited to see how is this was going to go.

At this point, I only had 6 designs. As mentioned the main important aspect of the collection is the embroidery and this is the visual idea that I have in terms of the placement and silhouette. I also wanted to come out with some asymmetrical design as shown in the picture. However, I still wanted to further develop the designs because I also wanted to explore with traditional silhouettes but still stick with the same concept. 

That's all my progress for the week 1 meeting with Fiziwoo and there will be more updates on my design development on the second week!

Feedback

When I first showed my ideas the designers, Fizi and Kai wanted me to do more idea development for my tekat design and my fabric of choice. they said my idea for the embroidery wasn't connected to my main concept which is punk because I said I wanted to do something that's inspired by cherry blossom. so, they wanted me to explore more tekat idea that's slanted more towards punk so it matches with my concept. In terms of the fabrics, I wanted to do velvet because I thought I was supposed to do a collection that's straightforwardly inspired by tekat but I was wrong. So, they also wanted me to change them and find more contemporary fabrics.

Reflection

During the first week of meeting with them I was kind of nervous about it because I prepared my presentation at the very last minute and I didn't know what to except but everything went really well that I anticipated as they were really helpful at giving me some advice on my design. Listening to their feedback on my design really helped me to clarify my direction so it made the designing process a lot  easier for me.