Help Save Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art

Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art is in danger of being lost forever! Moon Love Batik needs your help. We are the only program in Laos devoted to saving Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn batik art with an apprentice program dedicated to transferring the knowledge for the future.

Hello, I am Tsimmuaj Adam Xyooj, (pronounced: Cheemoua Adam Xiong). I am the founder of Moon Love Batik. In August 2022, I took the first step of preserving the Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art by having the last Master Batik Zu XIONG join our effort. Beginning February 2023, I found two young Hmong women to learn from Master Batik Zu XIONG and to become her apprentices. They are her only apprentices, since she had never had an apprentice before! I felt the urgency from the deepest center of my heart that we had to preserve Hmong Batik Art before it was too late for the Hmong people to even realize it was gone, so I made the decision to open Moon Love Batik. With a modest amount of seed money scraped together from personal sacrifices, (including the sale of my family house!) Moon Love Batik officially opened on the 1st of April, 2023.

Despite these huge personal sacrifices, I had to open Moon Love Batik no matter what because I knew that if I did not open the studio, then Traditional Hmong Hand-drawn Batik would die and disappear forever. Without our apprentice program, there would be no transfer of knowledge and it would disappear without a trace. Protecting the future of our shared Hmong heritage is a burning fire in my heart and I will do everything in my power to keep it alive as a living art for all of us in the future.

Based on the limited budget of starting Moon Love Batik, our future is truly uncertain. We have a promising future, but without help now, we really don’t know how long we can survive, that’s why we are asking help from everyone to support us and be a part of preserving the dying Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art and make it alive as living Art for our future generations.

“Nyob Zoo os ib tsoom phooj ywg thiab kwv tij neej tsa sawv daws!

Thov peb sawv daws pab khaws Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art by supporting us today!

2. WHAT IS HMONG TRADITIONAL HAND-DRAWN BATIK ART?

Hmong Batik is an ancient artform belonging to the Hmong hill-tribe people, recognized by intricate white designs on deep blue indigo hemp. It is made by hand-drawing a design with beeswax on woven hemp fabric, then coloring the cloth with natural indigo dye. The wax is boiled off to reveal the beautiful drawing, preserved in white. The motifs of traditional Hmong batik have deep meaning to Hmong people because the symbols within the pattern tell the story of their life on the mountainside.

3. WHY DOES HMONG TRADITIONAL HAND-DRAWN BATIK ART NEED TO BE PRESERVED?

Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art in Laos is on a fast path to extinction. Due to various reasons, hand drawn Hmong batik Art has been almost completely replaced by mechanical methods to create batik patterns. These products can be made quickly and sold inexpensively in the markets. As a result, the meaning, technique and understanding of the traditional motifs is rapidly being lost.The act of drawing the Hmong Batik symbols is a skill that cannot be replicated by any other means. By hand-drawing the traditional Hmong batik, then we will begin to understand the true value behind the Batik Art and find the true meaning.

We have found the last master Batik artist in Laos and her name is Zu XIONG. She is reaching the age of 73. She has been drawing in the ancient way of making Hmong batik for 60 years, and has become an expert of Hmong batik with a deep understanding of the meaning of the symbols and motifs. Her batik is breathtakingly beautiful and anyone who has the privilege of seeing her work firsthand will understand immediately why we urgently need to save this vanishing artform.

We became aware that in the villages, Grandmothers had stopped teaching their grand-daughters the techniques and meanings of hand-drawn Hmong batik Art. There are many reasons for this, such as the demands of farmwork to support the family, the young generation attending school, the increase of inexpensive machine-made clothing, and the influx of international clothing styles. We are dedicated to empowering Hmong women to reclaim this lost knowledge and be able to make a career through preserving their cultural heritage.

We are extremely passionate about our objective of preserving the art of hand-drawn Hmong batik and keeping it alive as a living art. Through expanding our apprentice program, we are determined to empower Hmong women by giving them the opportunity to learn this rare artform as a way to make a better living for themselves. We aim to promote traditional Hmong Batik as a valuable living asset to Hmong culture and create an appealing career path for Hmong women to pursue. We strive to create an immersive educational experience for visitors to Laos to bring awareness and appreciation to the underrepresented Hmong hill-tribe people and culture. We have received numerous positive reviews from our workshop participants. In addition, we strive to create an environment for learning suitable for students of higher education.

4. BENEFICIARY

Through our apprentice program, Hmong women directly benefit, as they can pursue a lucrative career as a master batik artist. Tourists visiting Laos of all ages find enjoyment and enrichment through our immersive batik workshop and indigo dye experience. Our educational program benefits international students seeking an intensive study in Hmong batik. Hmong people of all ages will benefit directly by seeing their culture represented in a beautiful and meaningful way, instilling pride and value in their own culture. People around the world will benefit by having the beauty of Hmong batik available for future generations.

5. Our Pledge to Give Back

We pledge to share 5% of our total profit to help the remote Hill-Tribe students by providing school supplies to them. There are many Hill Tribe parents in the countryside who can't afford their children's text-books, school-uniforms, and school supplies. Many of these families struggle to even provide a healthy meal for their family, and have no access to English books. Your support of Moon Love Batik will not only help save Hmong Batik, but can also help transform the lives of underprivileged children living in remote villages.

Moon Love Batik is a social enterprise with the Mission to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage of the art of Hmong hand-drawn Batik and to keep the traditional techniques, motifs and meaning alive as a living art for the future. Through cultivating the apprenticeship of this endangered art form, we are empowering Hmong women to pursue a worthy career while honoring the ancient traditions of their heritage, and also bringing awareness and appreciation to this under-represented culture and endangered art-form.

6. Appreciation for all donors to Moon Love Batik.

Thank you so much to all of the donors that supported Moon Love Batik and Thanks a million for being a part of preserving the Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art. We are so grateful that if you ever come to Laos, we would like to show our appreciation by offering a free Batik class experience for you or a discount of the purchase of goods in our shop.

7. APPRENTICES EXPENSES FROM 1ST JANUARY 2024 - 31ST DECEMBER 2025.

Since Moon Love Batik opened in April 2023, we are very grateful to all of those who have visited and supported us! We are so happy to have you being a part of the Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art preservation. We are determined to keep our Batik Artists as long as we can, no matter what happens to Moon Love Batik. Today Moon Love Batik is only making barely enough money for some expenses and just enough money to pay for our Batik Artists salaries through Months since we opened Moon Love Batik. We want to ensure that Moon Love Batik will survive through these years and be sustainable for the future.

Now that Moon Love Batik is in the high season of Luang Prabang Laos, we expected to get a boost from more tourism to the area, but unfortunately we haven’t seen the amount of visitors to Moon Love Batik as we had hoped. Since we are a new program, many people don’t know about us yet. We believe in the power of the kindness, love and support of everyone and we have no doubt that with your help we will make this happen and Moon Love Batik will live on to protect and preserve this dying Hmong Traditional Hand-Drawn Batik Art for all Hmong People of the world!