Mobile Subjects in Linked Open Data: Biases and Gaps in Identity and Representation

Mobile Subjects, Contrapuntal Modernisms investigates the circulation of artists from the decolonizing world through the colonial and artistic capitals of London and Paris. It examines and compares London and Paris as contrapuntal capitals of decolonizing empires that functioned as critical meeting places, anti-colonial hubs, and sites of exchange after WWII due to postwar mass migration. The project addresses the invisibility of overseas artists in histories of art through computational methods revealing their connections and intersections.

The relational database built for this project has been modeled upon CIDOC CRM ontology and establishes an event-based schema that connects people (or actors as defined by the CRM) to each other and defines their identities and social relationships, including racial identity, citizenship, gender, social class, political affiliations, language(s) used, and belonging to artistic groups. We decided to adopt an “universally” recognised ontology for the benefits of data integration and exchange with GLAM institutions and other art history projects. However, we are increasingly aware of the epistemological biases and knowledge gaps present in the CIDOC CRM. In this lightning talk we will discuss our work, focusing on the classes and properties that need to be addressed to better represent the identities of artists, and review existing efforts to tackle elements of this issue in other ontologies and CIDOC CRM extensions.