Erasure: Black Arts LA

VPAM presents an evening exploring Black erasure and creative resistance through language, image, and live presentation, inviting audiences to engage with histories both remembered and obscured.

After a light reception and after-hours gallery access, guests will be invited to participate in a hands-on poetry activity using pages from the Act On It! exhibition catalog, facilitated by poet and artist Rebecca Gonzales. Guided by creative prompts and surrounded by the exhibition’s artwork, participants will create erasure poems, a literary form in which words are selectively removed from an existing text to reveal a new piece of writing. The resulting poems will be digitized and archived as part of VPAM’s evolving record of community reflection and response.

Later in the evening, acclaimed cultural critic and writer Ernest Hardy will present a multimedia lecture investigating the many dimensions of Black erasure (collective, historical, structural, and cultural) through an incisive mix of film clips, literature, music, and social media. Rooted in the legacy of the Black Arts West movement and drawing from Hardy’s collaborative archival project The Black Book, the presentation will trace cultural erasure and resilience, while proposing pathways toward reimagined futures.