Representation of Femininity in Kurdish Women Paintings (A Social Semiotic Perspective to Negin Vakili and Akram Karimi’s Works)

Abstract

AbstractThe aim of this article is to apply a social semiotic model to analyze the representation of femininity in Kurdish women paintings. The sample includes female painters of Sanandaj in recent two decades recruited through purposeful sampling. The works of Negin Vakili and Akram Karimi have been analyzed by way of Kress & Leeuwen’s social semiotic model, in terms of representational, interactional, and synthetic meanings. The findings show that these two painters, in spite of similarity in terms of their themes and styles, reach two different points: femininity as represented in Vakili’s work follows a kind of reflective sexism, though in Karimi’s work it follows a passive sexism. In the first one, the form of connection between the elements is narrative, so it can provide a reflection of women’s identity. However, in the second one, the elements are connected through a conceptual pattern as well as a kind of passive sexism is unintendedly reproduced. Vakili represents the subject in a natural space which reminds the women’s status in mythical thinking, but Karimi represents the subject in the context of home and family, something which symbolizes women’s status in traditional society. Vakili’s work invites the audience to think about the effects of external factors in constructing female identity, but Karimi’s paintings call the viewers to have a kind of sympathy and identification with women in traditional family and society.

Keywords

• femineity
• representation
• passivity
• painting
• subjectivity