The art of style: doctor gives traditional wear a digital shine

 

Shafikah Hanani’s depiction of a Kelantanese srikandi (female warrior) named Mek Siti.

PETALING JAYA: As a medical doctor, Shafikah Hanani Suhimi spends most of her days in a white lab coat, examining people who are ill. After hours, though, she escapes into another world and examines people dressed elegantly in traditional wear.

Her focus: women in traditional outfits such as kebayas and baju kurung made from luxurious textiles like songket.

Shafikah turns her observations into graphic art, using digital portraits of these women to adorn postcards, phone cases and knobs, notebook planners, and tote bags which she sells online.

“It was an escape from job-related stress and coping with my late father’s cancer diagnosis,” says Shafikah, 32, a self-taught digital artist whose full-time job is as a medical officer in a Kuala Kangsar clinic.

She often draws inspiration from random women who catch her eye on the streets, and also from museum exhibitions and classic Malay movies like the late P Ramlee’s romantic comedy Madu Tiga.

Dian, a Malay woman adorned with jewellery, in a classic black kebaya outfit.

“Whenever I watch Madu Tiga, I can imagine the colours of the beautiful garments worn by the characters even though the whole film is black and white,” she said.

“We need to appreciate our roots and traditions before anybody else can. We don’t have to wear traditional clothes every day, but we should have a basic understanding of them,” she told FMT.

Her love of traditional wear began when she was in kindergarten. As she grew up, she would spend hours visiting museums, especially when there were exhibitions on Malaysian garments.

Shafikah creates her art on an iPad tablet. She prints the completed work on her home printer or sends the job out to local suppliers. Her merchandise is on shopping sites like Shopee and Etsy, under the brand name ‘The Art of Mahsuri’.

While Shafikah is keen on observing people in public, she maintains her privacy and wouldn’t be photographed for this article.

Bidasari, a lady wearing the ‘keringkam’, a Sarawakian traditional head scarf.

She prefers to keep the focus on her art, which has drawn praise from an association of traditional textile lovers. Nini Marini Ramlan, president of the Citra association, said she was delighted to see young Malaysians embracing traditional clothing.

“It’s great that we feature our traditional garb in digital art because it’s a form of promotion and it creates awareness for others,” she told FMT.

Such art would give the artist a sense of identity and would open up conversations about the textiles and the history behind them, she said.

“If you study history, you can see the development of our nation’s history through textile and fashion. For instance, not many know that the original shape of the baju kurung was actually influenced by the Indian kurta,” said Nini.

Shafikah’s art is available on merchandise such as phone cases and knobs.

She said that the only way for the coming generations to feel pride for Malaysian traditional clothing is to teach them about their history and significance.

A good start would be to teach about the different motifs found on textiles, such as the pucuk rebung, bunga cengkih, and bunga pecah empat. “If we can decipher the codes on traditional textiles, there’s so much that we can learn. That’s the charm, there’s a wealth of history to be uncovered,” said Nini. - FMT