Yang Chunyan (d. 2023) was a master batik artist from Guizhou, Southwest China, whose work carried forward generations of Miao textile knowledge. Her extraordinarily precise wax drawings bring together botanical, animal, geometric, and cosmological motifs in complex indigo compositions. Rurban worked with Yang and her family to document and share her practice, and this collection preserves a small number of works from that relationship. Batik holds a central place within Miao textile traditions in Guizhou. Using fine metal tools, artists draw molten beeswax directly onto cloth before repeatedly dyeing the textile in indigo. Motifs may draw from plants, animals, domestic life, mythology, ancestry, and cosmology.
