User:SummerWeidler/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?

Xing Danwen: Female Chinese Artist


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

When researching artist Xing Danwen, there was no Wikipedia page providing any information about her. When typing the name into Wikipedia, it says “The page ‘Xing Danwen’ does not exist.” Wikipedia is a source used every day by millions of people, but there is a large gap in the information that is on this website. Reading the first line and seeing “does not exist” almost erases this artist and caused me to check twice that I had spelled her name correctly. This gap limits knowledge of Chinese women artists. Xing Danwen was born in China, but also worked and practiced in New York in the late 90s. She is a well-known artist that provides representation of both a female and Chinese perspective. There is a vast underrepresentation of female artists as well as female Chinese artists, and this becomes much more evident when researching in popular search engines like Wikipedia. There are many stereotypes regarding Chinese females and many are largely fetishized. Noticing how and where Chinese female artists are and aren't featured allow us to see where historical and modern gaps occur. Finding this lack of information allows questions like how do we fill this gap, how does this “erase” these artists, and how does this limit our knowledge on these different structures?


 * 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.)

Artist Xing Danwen was born in Xi’an China in 1967. She studied at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Art, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and The School of Visual Arts. Danwen has received both her BFA Fine Art and MFA Photo Related Media. She currently lives and works Beijing. Her works are exhibited domestically as well as internationally and displayed in institutions such as Whitney Museum of American Art, Pompidou Center, International center for Photography, and Victoria and Albert Museum. Her art surrounds concepts such as dislocation between cultural status, conflict between globalization and tradition, environmental issues, and urban development. She strives to be treated equally to male artists and to be seen as an international artist; art critics have interpreted her art as a representation of the Chinese experimental art community. Her photographs offer female perspective as well as representation. In many of her works she Danwen puts herself as the center of her piece and putting her male counterparts in the supporting roles. Her use of this perspective allows audiences to identity social problems and gender issues. Danwen’s art consists of photography and installations. Her most popular works include Wall House, Urban Fictions, DUPLICATION, disCONNEXION, Sleep Walking, Scroll, A Personal Diary, Born With Cultural Revolution, and I am a Woman. Danwen’s series I am a Woman includes female nudity and is regarded as the first photography of this subject captured by a Chinese woman photographer. Her work Urban Fictions is described as taking real things, but putting them in different places creating a fictional reality. Danwen describes people who pick and choose their new homes from a maquette as "image(ining) their happiness in this little cube." Danwen finds inspiration through observing every day life, by observing society and people and drawing questions from that relationship.


 * 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.)


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