Josephine Komara has redefined a cultural expression that was intricate and lovely but so locked in tradition it bordered on staid. “Tradition is the way we are,” she says. “Modern is the way we think.”
Josephine Komara was depressed. She had recently divorced. She had moved into a small house. Her business supplying fabric for lampshades was lucrative but unfulfilling. Ms. Komara sipped her wine and smoked a cigarette. She sank to the floor, dipping her hands into two wooden chests filled with antique Indonesian textiles.
In one chest, Ms. Komara recently recalled, were batik designs from the island of Java, in the other elaborate weavings from Indonesia’s outer islands. She swallowed
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