MfA Visual Communication Seminar: Assistant Professor Piyaluk Benjadol

 
 


The Visual Semiotics of Yor (ญ): Alphabet Primers and Thai Femininity Discourses
by Assistant Professor Piyaluk Benjadol, Bangkok University

May 3rd 2016, 2pm-4pm
Kx Building, Floor 15

Alumni and faculty welcome: please contact me in advance if you would like to attend this event as we would like to keep it small(email fine)

In this seminar Thai designer and lecturer Piyaluk Benjadol will introduce her recent PhD research into questions of visual language and gender construction in Thai children’s books. Drawing on semiotic and discourse analysis of thirty-one alphabet primers published between 1899 and 2012 the research reveals how mundane, ephemeral and often overlooked graphic artefacts disclose discourses and ideologies of Thai femininity and discusses how these relate to the broader patriarchal power relations of Thai society. The synthesis of these findings led to a series of design projects which sought to draw attention to and  'denaturalise' these ideologies.

Piyaluk Benjadol (1967) is an Assistant Professor in Communication Design at the School of Fine and Applied Arts, Bangkok University, Thailand. She is now a Ph.D. candidate in Design Arts at Silpakorn University, Bangkok. She served as the head of Communication Design Department during 1995-2001 and 2006-2010. Piyaluk teaches and lectures on packaging design, communication design, and contemporary issues on graphic design. She also applies Semiotics frameworks to graphic design field and provides essay about decoding Thai advertisements. Her papers in various subjects are published in books, magazines, and journals.