REPRESENTATION OF THE MEANING OF INDUNG IN VISUAL ARTWORKS

• Main Author: Maulina, Rini
• Format: Dissertations
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Kesenian; seni rupa dan dekorasi
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/63057
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The word mother is found in various languages around the world. In Indonesia, the word mother exists in different local languages, such as ammak in Makassar language, inan in East Timorese, and so on. The word indung means mother in Sundanese. Indung has two meanings, biological indung as indung who gets pregnant, gives birth and cares for children, and cultural indung which have a broader meaning. Cultural indung is found in proverbs such as indung tunggul rahayu (mother roots of the glory of life) and in babasan such as indung beurang (village midwife) in text form. In visual form, indung is found in leuit indung (rice barn), indung pare (bunches of rice harvested for the first time) and waditra kacapi indung (traditional Sundanese musical instrument). This shows that the word indung in its visual form is very limited and in symbols form, the meaning is not visible, as in proverb "nyumput buni dinu caang, negrak bari teu katembong" (indung is close to our lives, but it is not visible), the meaning of indung needs to be known and understood. Another problem is that in Indonesian visual artworks, there is a mother theme with dominant visualization describing the life of mothers and women's problems in general as in the works of Arahmaiani, Erika Ernawan, Melati Suryodarmo, Citra Sasmita and others. Based on that, the problems found related to the meaning of indung in Sundanese culture and visualization in visual artwork with mother theme is that research on indung was not widely found, visual artworks with mother theme were still within the scope of definition of biological mother, and the art with the indung theme in Sundanese culture were not found. The urgency of creating visual art on indung meaning based on research is that research on the meaning of indung is still needed, the opportunity to create visual art with the theme of indung meaning is still wide and the chance to use visualization and media from tradition, especially written batik are still big and to find new visualizations on the mother theme in visual art. The creation of visual art based on research on the meaning of indung theme were using the Art Based Research (ABR) method, a method which is able to adapt the principles of creative art to answer social research questions holistically in which theory and practice are interrelated. Based on the ABR method used, the creation of visual artwork on indung meaning was carried out in parallel between research on the meaning of indung and exploration of the creation of visual artworks, which is done for about three years in the range of mid-2018 to mid-2021 for six semester periods that is 1st semester 1 to 6th semester. In each period, research on the meaning of indung was conducted and then the acquisition of the meaning of the indung was obtained and it was represented in visual art through visual exploration and conventional and non-conventional media to find strong visualizations which are connected to the concept of art. During 1st to 5th period, the meaning of indung and 13 exploration works were obtained. The work produced in each period was the result of evaluation and exploration of the previous work. From the results of this exploration, it was evaluated and found findings that the works with tradition visualization and media were able to convey the meaning of indung, and it was also found that strong meaning of indung has not been found yet, so it was necessary to narrow down the data on the meaning of indung. Based on that, a narrowing of the meaning was carried out by using the triangulation method on the meaning of indung data obtained from the literature, questionnaires, interviews and the results of focus group discussion. Focus group discussion with Sundanese cultural experts were carried out to clarify the data obtained and to get additional data of the meaning of indung. The result of narrowing of the meaning obtained core meanings, which are the source of life, home, love, leader and beauty, and it was found that indung is not able to be symbolized singly, has generative abilities, spiritual and material content and it is not gendered. The findings of indung meaning and the results of exploratory evaluations of visualization and media, as well as the inspiration of visual elements from the works of contemporary artists were represented in 12 visual artworks, consisting of six artworks measuring 50 x 50 cm and six works measuring 150 x 50 cm. Visual artworks from contemporary artists were used as inspiration in the work in order to give the visualization power which is desired to be achieved The visualization of the 12 works resulted in a combination of tradition visualizations in the form of motifs and colors found in West Java batik and visual elements of artworks from contemporary artists which is used to describe plants, animals, clouds, water, as well as the use of isen-isen as a texture in the picture, there are other formal elements such as shapes, lines, fields in an asymmetrical composition. The result of combining the thought ideas (from the five meanings of indung, which are the Source of Life, Home, Love, Leader and Beauty), visual ideas from traditional batik, the evaluation result of artwork exploration and the artworks of contemporary artists inspire the visualization of the meaning of indung theme describing indung as having generative, spirit and material abilities. Indung is not able to be symbolized singly and it is not gendered so that the visualization is different from the tendency of artworks in existing genre or mother theme.