Week 10 Reflection

 When I enrolled in this course, I did not have a clear idea of what to expect. I assumed the format of this course would be similar to past Art History classes I’ve taken, but I was pleasantly surprised by the structure around the Wikipedia project. In past courses I’ve taken, I’ve felt frustrated when learning about instances of underrepresentation because the classes do not present an avenue for me or my classmates to work on closing this gap. Incorporating the subversive archiving project into the structure of this course allowed all of us to become active participants in closing the representation gap on Wikipedia for Chicana artists, which also helped me feel more connected to the course material. I am so incredibly grateful for this course for teaching me research skills; meeting with Xaviera was incredibly helpful and gave me a basic understanding of the UCLA Library system as well as taught me which databases are the best starting places for research projects. The skills I learned from this class and from Xaviera have already been helpful for other classes I was enrolled in this quarter, and were crucial for helping me find the peer reviewed, published sources I used for my Wikipedia article. 

I really enjoyed the guest speakers who presented this quarter, especially Amina Cruz’s presentation. In high school I was very interested in punk aesthetics, but European punk aesthetics (ex. 1980’s Berlin) were the only ones to which I was introduced. Hearing about Amina Cruz’s relationship with the punk scene and how photography fits into that relationship was fascinating. Hearing Amina’s comments on how she tries to go about creating art without taking advantage of the people she photographs was also engaging, as I’ve heard a lot of stories of photographers and painters taking advantage of their models or failing to compensate them. I also loved hearing everybody in the class’s presentation on the artist they chose for the Wikipedia project. This was my favorite class I took this quarter, and I am incredibly grateful for the research skills I learned, as well as for the introduction to so many artists who I had not heard of before I took this class.