About Tulisan

About Tulisan

Wearable Design Objects

Since 2010, Tulisan has been publishing storytelling wearable serigraph objects as a way of regenerating heritage. In Indonesia, textile traditions have long encompassed weaving, batik wax painting, and narrative illustration—forms of “wastra,” or literature in cloth, where stories are spun into threads and embodied through the way fabric is worn. Across the archipelago, women have historically served as guardians of this sacred storytelling practice, weaving knowledge that sustained harmony between humanity and nature amidst rapid development. This legacy reminds us that our ancestors lived in societies where women held central roles and wielded significant influence.

Tulisan’s wearable design objects consciously honour this heritage, transforming textiles into living narratives that connect past and present, while empowering future generations through cultural memory and design. Our wearable storytelling objects are handmade with limited-edition, hand-pulled serigraphy. As a local brand in Jakarta, our challenge is to sustain slow-craft disciplines while resisting the cycle of low-cost, mainstream fashion. We believe it is vital to ground our work in history and reframe marginalised cultural narratives as shared global stories.

The Artist

Melissa Sunjaya

is an Indonesian visual artist based in Jakarta who mixes drawing, writing, and sewing. Her work employs illustration as a universal language to articulate complex themes, with a focus on the often-neglected stories of Southeast Asian women. This exploration leads to examining the material culture in wearable artefacts, which she perceives as a medium of art and a catalyst for social change. Her practice incorporates an autoethnographic approach and historical archives, offering insights into creating a more inclusive and representative visual narrative. She established Tulisan in 2010, a grassroots artisanal label of wearable serigraphs infused with storytelling.

Our Values