User:205.175.98.210/gap analysis

Gap Analysis

 * What is the title of the article in which you identified a gap. If no article exists at all, what should the title be?

Blanka Amezkua


 * Document the gap you found, describe how you identified it, and analyze its impact on knowledge.

I first discovered the gap in Blanka’s page by “googling” her name to see what would pop up. Interestingly enough, her Wikipedia page was not the first webpage result but the third or fourth- different segments of her official website were the first several results; generally when I “google” someone, I find that their Wikipedia page is either the first or second thing that is listed. I was excited to see that she already had a Wikipedia page about her, but once I clicked on it, I was somewhat disappointed in the little information that was provided about all aspects of her- her personal life, her career, her artwork, her achievements, etc. I also noticed that the creator of the article did list Blanka as a “Mexican contemporary artist,” but did not say to which genre, decade, style, or movement to which she belongs; another interesting gap I discovered is that there is no official page for Mexican contemporary artists, only a “category” in the search function. There is also a gap on the “Contemporary Art” page in its “History” section, which pidgeonholes the category of “Feminist Art” to only the 1970s. All of these gaps allow for the continual misrecognition of “marginal” or lesser-known artists and acceptance of the white, predominantly male artists that are taught about in Art History, showcased in museums, and regarded as “prodigies of their time.” They allow for ignorance in the art world. The feminist art movement is not just specifically a movement, nor did it simply apply to the 1970s; contemporary artists come from all over the world, not just the Western area; female artists, especially non-white female artists, are talented individuals who deserve to be recognized for their hard work, not overshadowed by white, Western-centric male and female artists.


 * Propose a paragraph of new or substantially edited content based on reliable sources. (If you are editing existing content, post the current version along with your edited version, and clearly mark which is which.)

I propose to provide additional information to Blanka Amezkua's "Career" paragraph on her Wikipedia page (hyperlink below). My additions would be:

Blanka Amezkua, born in 1971 in Mexico City, Mexico, is a contemporary artist, who works through several different platforms of art in order to address gender, sexuality, and cultural issues. While she is primarily known for her focus on embroidery, crochet, and collage, Amezkua also works with sculpture, photography, and public and performance art.

She began her career through training as a formal painter in Florence, Italy, and then proceeded to receive her Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University, Fresno. Her profession took off in March of 2008 when she opened up her bedroom in South Bronx as an exhibition hall, called the Bronx Blue Bedroom Project, or BBBP, for contemporary artists to display their works in a more intimate setting compared to museum exhibitions. As part of their participation in the project, each artist involved was expected to be active in the area and was also requested to either host a workshop within the local community or prepare a meal during their show for visiting artists and art enthusiasts. In 2010, she moved to Athens, Greece to begin her next project, titled 3///3 ...three walls on wednesdays..., in which artists worldwide were invited to display their works upon three walls that Amezkua set up and moved around the city. Amezkua said that she wanted to “take art to areas lacking in art spaces in Athens,” so she traveled throughout the city with these three wooden panels, displaying works for five hours every Wednesday. One of her later projects, started in 2012, 8 to 8: State of Creative Emergency, was as much an exhibition as a piece of performance art; in this project, Amezkua sought out talented individuals to come together for one day only to create and execute a project for twelve hours straight, from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Amezkua explained that “the creators will invite the general public to engage in interesting actions that emphasize the positive creative aspects of the self, encourage dialogue within a social fabric that is in urgent need to view itself differently.” She also said that through her project, she wished “to invite people to reflect, to share, to create and to talk about the way they are feeling in hopes of changing the existing route of things, one person at a time.”

Many of her series revolve around the manner in which women are portrayed and sexualized in Mexican adult comics. Amezkua primarily utilized embroidery and crochet, two techniques considered to be traditionally feminine and domestic, in these series in order to appropriate sexualized images of women from Mexican adult comic books and redefine them as rebellious, powerful, and free from male control and the male gaze. Amezuka chose to keep her embroidered figures’ comic book appearances in order to also remove them from the sexist and violent atmosphere that engulfed the world of adult comics in 20th century Mexico, empower her female identity and disrupt the clichés about it, and distort the original image that was once a part of male visual-sexual pleasure. She also utilized collage, pasting images of women from old sensacionales, or adult comic books, and then painting over them with nail polish and puncturing the pages and images with nails. Through her projects, Amezkua wanted to examine the evocative and provocative nature of images and their psychological effects on their viewers.

* I also feel that further articles or subparagraphs/categories could even be created for each of her projects and shows; these pages could provide short synopses of what the medium of her art was, what the subject of her work was, what materials she used, what year she showcased the exhibit/project, where she exhibited, and her inspiration and meaning behind it all. These articles would not be as long as her own artist page, but they would create a better understanding as to what Amezkua creates, why she creates it, and what importance it has for us and for contemporary and feminist art. I know that I was not able to cover all of her work, but I am glad that I was able to get the ball rolling and provide much more in-depth information for her.

Hyperlink to Blanka Amezkua's current Wikipedia page: Blanka Amezkua


 * List the reliable sources that could be used to improve this gap. (You can use the Cite tool from the editing toolbar above to input and format your sources.