The Blue Carbon – Exhibition of Naturally Dyed Clothing

In December 2019, the lobby of the Bałtyk building hosted an exhibition of the unique clothing collection The Blue Carbon, designed and created in Indonesia by artist Marta Węglińska, who had been working with the culture of the island nation for three years.

The exhibition was accompanied by a lecture in which Węglińska spoke about the techniques behind the garments and the cultural contexts that shaped the collection. The dresses, created in the spirit of slow fashion, were hand-decorated using the batik technique and dyed exclusively with organic pigments. They reflected different ways of perceiving nature in Indonesian culture, with each piece telling its own story — from 17th-century illustrations of the archipelago’s flora, through mythological animals of Borneo, to traditional batik motifs inspired by the natural world and masks from the Panji dance drama, in which the prince merges with greenery to escape his enemies.

The use of batik transformed the collection into a work of art. Each dress became a distinct painterly object, unique in form and colour palette.

The collection was created in Yogyakarta (Central Java) in collaboration with the family-run dyeing workshop Bixa Batik.