SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF EMBODIMENT IN THE DESIGN OF INDONESIAN WOMEN DESIGNERS

Abstract

For designers, the body is the main instrument for creating design works that indirectly reflect social reality. In social interpretation, body issues affect the relationship between men and women. Furthermore, these issues influence the aesthetic discourse of modern design, which is formed in the form of a binary opposition with the logic of “form follows function”. Women are associated with form, while men are associated with function. However, the unique experience of women designers indirectly reflects social reality in their design work. This unique experience is referred to as embodiment. Previous research on the influence of embodiment, especially in the work of women designers in Indonesia, is still relatively scarce, except in the field of art. The embodiment of women designers is often limited to the representation of designs inspired by the woman body, which prolongs the objectification of women. Therefore, this study focuses on the influence of the embodiment of women designers in their work, which has not yet been explored. This study analyses three design works by Indonesian designers, namely Yolanda Santosa, Nita Darsono and Patricia Untario, which raise the issue of woman embodiment as a representation of social relations in society. This study uses semiotic analysis by tracing the levels of denotative and connotative meanings that later develop into myths or ideologies that appear in signs, both visual and written. This study aims to find the influence of embodiment reflected in the design of women designers in Indonesia. The findings of this study reveal the influence of women's embodiment as a reflection of social construction in the design of the three women designers. Women designers offer representations of women by challenging stereotypes of women in the form of binary oppositions that are often subordinated and objectified in media and design. The representation shows a claim and rearrangement of established semiotic elements in the binary opposition system as a form of counter-discourse in representing women based on their embodied experience.