(Seattle, WA) – As part of an ongoing effort to broaden its programming internationally, CoCA is proud to announce its upcoming exhibition, East/West Batik and Beyond: Communities of Women, Craft, and Survival, opening First Thursday, July 3 (Art walk; 5 - 9pm)  and running through July 26, 2025, at CoCA's gallery space at 114 Third Ave S. in Seattle's Pioneer Square.

This groundbreaking exhibition, co-curated by Jieyi Ludden Zhou (Shanghai) and CoCA’s David Francis, brings together a vibrant collection of women artists from rural China and Western Washington to explore the transcultural traditions of batik, batik-inspired textile arts (including shibori and other resist dyeing techniques), and the powerful women's communities associated with these crafts.

East/West Batik and Beyond offers a unique glimpse into new developments in Chinese textile arts, focusing on Batik inspired by women’s communities in Miao (Hmong) ethnic minority villages like Danzhai. Artist Jieyi Ludden Zhou has dedicated themself to a cultural ethnography art and fashion project, undertaking six trips over the past two years to Danzhai, Guizhou, and the remote mountain villages that are the birthplace of Chinese batik. During one of these trips, Zhou was accompanied by documentary photographer Lanny Xiuzhu Li, whose compelling photos of the women's craft community will complement the batik artwork from Jieyi Ludden Zhou, fashion from Cheng Hao (with surface pattern designs supported by Jieyi Ludden Zhou and Ninghang Artisans), and artwork from the Ninghang folk artists. Many of these folk artists, who never had the opportunity for formal schooling or to learn to read and write, have, through their collective, been able to survive and pass forward the vital batik tradition.

Complementing and contrasting with the Chinese cohort, four artists from the Pacific Northwest demonstrate the absorbing fascination with resist-dying inspired by batik and other craft-based processes, such as stitching: Cameron Anne Mason brings batik flags from Burning Man in addition to abstract ice-dying textiles in both two- and three-dimensions, while Caryn Friedlander and Carla Stehr also turn to the natural world for inspiration through texture, stitching, and staining. Longtime batik artist Susan Shneider includes a series of batik portraits from the end of the Vietnam-war era.

In addition to wall- and ceiling-hung textiles, the show also includes video monitors with women’s communities in Danzhai creating batik, including audio with work songs. Pedestals will feature Mason’s sculptural work (on loan from Foster/White).

The exhibition is co-curated by Jieyi Ludden Zhou, who curated the China-based artists, bringing a dual perspective to this cross-cultural dialogue, and CoCA Curator David Francis, who focused on the Western Washington artists (with help from Carla Stehr)