This Nusantara Series work by Fatimah Chik is intriguing for its colour play, intricate design and subtle overlaps over its core centrifugal mandala. Two squares are tilted at diagonals, one as a light shadow covered at the truncation and the other ooh-so-light as if in the foremost ground piques the composition. In two bands, designs in white simulating khat calligraphy, provide a pattern matric, the peripheral one snuffed out by the diagonal rectangle band. In her Nusantara Series, Timah, as she is better known, draws liberally from her block printings culled from her research and modifications from the cultures of Dayak, Batak, Toradja, Sumba, the Celebes and the Malays. Fatimah Chik has brought great innovations into batik painting with her block printing based on studies of Southeast Asian traditional cultures. She won the Juror’s Choice in the Malaysian level competition of the Philip Morris Asean Art Awards in 1996 and was chosen for the 3rd Asia-Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Australia, in 1999. She won 1st Prize in the National Sejadah Design competition in Kuala Lumpur in 2002, and 2nd Prize (batik category) in the Permodalan Nasional art competition in 1985. Timah graduated with a Bachelor of Design (Textile) from the Mara Institute of Technology in 1971.