Sandra Niessen, anthropologist (PhD Leiden 1985), has researched Batak weaving traditions (North Sumatra, Indonesia) for more than 40 years. This has results in numerous articles and 4 books. Her dissertation entitled Motifs of Life in Toba Batak Texts and Textiles (1985), reconstructed and translated themes from the Batak thought world that she found imbued in textiles (women’s work) and inscribed in texts (men’s work). In 1993, she published Batak Cloth and Clothing, A Dynamic Indonesian Tradition, a history of Batak clothing. Legacy in cloth, Batak textiles of Indonesia, 2009, documents the conceptual ordering of Batak textile design. In 2011, together with the Javanese filmer, MJA Nashir, Sandra filmed an indigenous Batak text, Rangsa ni Tonun, a poetic description of Toba Batak weaving techniques. Since then she has worked on a range of projects to stimulate and support the Batak weaving arts, which are in drastic decline.
She consulted for the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles documenting batik textiles collected by King Chulalongkorn in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (2015 – 2019).
Sandra is a founding member of the Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion (RCDF), a group that raises awareness about the importance of indigenous dress traditions. She has published on the Eurocentric bias in fashion and the implications of this bias for sustainability.
Sandra Niessen lives and works freelance in The Netherlands. She served as curator at the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia (1988) and taught in the Department of Human Ecology, University of Alberta (1989 – 2001) in Canada. She is Canadian and Dutch. http://bataktextiles.blogspot.nl
