Jakarta, IO – A collaborative effort of Wot Batu, an installation artwork by contemporary Indonesian artist Sunaryo, and Oza Sudewo, an Indonesian tea blend specialist, has launched a tea blend, as a response to Sunaryo’s work. Wot Batu is intended to serve as a “spiritual bridge,” connecting the human soul with life’s physical form and the four elements existing in nature.
As a Certified Tea Blender and one of the first Indonesian blended tea specialists, Oza participates as a judge in the Tea Master Cup, an international tea competition that introduces tea leaf variants and seeks skilled tea masters to produce superior ready-to-serve tea. The prestigious Tea Master Cup started in 2013 and has introduced Indonesia’s premium-quality tea in different variants and favors.
Oza perceives Wot Batu as an artwork filled with spiritual meaning, depicting a human being’s journey through modern life and its dualism: the worldly life and the hereafter, material and spiritual, ancient and modern, and macrocosm and microcosm. Life’s three stages are manifested in three tea variants, in response to the work of art, inspired by a Sundanese concept of Tri Tangtu and specially formulated to represent the three stages of a human’s journey: beginning, middle, and end of life.
For his part, Wot Batu decided to team up with Oza to capture the character of Sunaryo’s artwork in tea. Oza revealed that he projected the idea of “savoring Wot Batu” through his tea brew in contemplation of Sunaryo’s childhood. A guava-favored tea records Sunaryo’s memory of his mother, in line with Batu Indung, one of his installation artworks.