Title
Portrait of a Peranakan woman in baju kuring
Year/Period
early 20th century
Region
Java
Technique
Dimension
Object size: 55.0 x 38.8 x 4.2 cm
Accession No.
2015-00509
Collection of
This portrait depicts a Peranakan Chinese woman wearing a silk dark baju kurung with her hair tied by in a sanggul (the Baba Malay word for hair bun). The baju kurung was a dress used by Peranakan Chinese and other Indonesian communities at the time, particularly Peranakans from Java. For Chinese Peranakans, ancestral portraits do not just seek to commemorate a death but serves the function of extending the presence of the deceased beyond death.
