User:Kristiyamamoto/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?

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

Through the Brooklyn Museum Sackler Center for Feminist Art Base, I was able to find a feminist artist whose work stood out to me, Orly Cogan. Cogan is an Israel born embroidery artist residing in New York City. Despite having had multiple solo exhibits as well as group shows with other artists around the country, Wikipedia is not only lacking information on her, but fails to have any page at all on Cogan. Typically, a simple Google search of a topic will result with a Wikipedia article on it as one of the first results, but despite there being plentiful results for Cogan, her work, and gallery showings, a Wikipedia article is nowhere to be found. This gap is problematic for reasons other than a lack of information; Wikipedia is lacking information on many other female and/or feminist artists, not just Cogan, especially artists of color. This prominent gap signifies many of the power structures in our society that uphold the systemic oppression of women and minorities. Under-representation of oppressed groups hurts efforts to gain equality because having accessible, comprehensive information is key to the visibility of the issues and the people they affect. While the privileged, in this case old or dead affluent white male artists, maintain high visibility, many female artists go unnoticed or undocumented by Wikipedia and this needs to change. In a revolutionary feminist fashion, we must work to fight the systems in place to gain visibility and equality, specifically between genders and races in this particular case, by taking matters into our own hands by doing research to add information on important feminist artists like Cogan to Wikipedia to make it a more comprehensive, inclusive encyclopedia.
 * 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.)

Orly Cogan is an artist based in New York City, born in 1971 in Jaffa, Israel. While she mainly works in the medium of embroidery, Cogan was originally trained and majored in painting at The Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art and The Maryland Institute College of Art. Her art has been featured in solo exhibitions as well as in group shows in galleries and museums across the United States. Cogan also uses other mediums of art along with embroidery using collages to incorporate drawings and photographs. Cogan’s intent behind using embroidery as her main medium is to reclaim an art form that was traditionally considered to be a craft only for women in a feminist way. Her pieces begin with recycled cloth from vintage tablecloths and the like that she then embroiders over images of nude women. These women are often depicted in domestic settings using vacuum cleaners or in contrast snorting lines of cocaine. Cogan’s work depicts women in many different lights as mothers, drug users, housewives, and/or owners of their own sexuality. Cogan has stated that her intent in using vintage domestic fabrics for her pieces depicting these diverse women is to modernize the traditional roles of women’s work, creating a juxtaposition between old and new ideals. Through these subjects Cogan incorporates themes of gender, femininity, intimacy and sexuality, and the challenging and subversion of certain stereotypes, making her art feminist in its meaning and intentions to make the audience question social constructs and norms.
 * 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.)


 * "Brooklyn Museum: Orly Cogan". https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/orly-cogan. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
 * "Future Heirlooms: Orly Cogan And The Fantasy Of Life- Mr X Stitch". Mr X Stitch. 2010-6-2. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
 * "CHARLIE JAMES GALLERY: Orly Cogan". http://www.cjamesgallery.com/artist-detail/cogan. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
 * Barrett, Annin (2008-09-04). "A Stitch in Time: New Embroidery, Old Fabric, Changing Values". Textile Society of America. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
 * Hemmings, Jessica. "Stitching Stories: Garfen, Dezso & Cogan". Jessica Hemmings. Retrieved 2016-02-12.