Free and open to the public.
Erasure: Black Arts LA
November 13 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Event Location
Vincent Price Art Museum
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.
Artist Info
ernest hardy
Ernest Hardy’s criticism has appeared in the New York Times, the Village Voice, Vibe, Rolling Stone, LA Times, and LA Weekly. He’s a contributor to the reference books 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and Classic Material: the Hip-Hop Album Guide. His collection of criticism, Blood Beats Vol. 1: Demos, Remixes and Extended Versions was a recipient of the 2007 PEN / Beyond Margins Award. He has curated programs for the Hammer Museum by himself and with Tisa Bryant as the multi-media duo Black Book. His forthcoming collection of poetry and short stories will be published by Writ
Large Press.
Show Credits
Act On It! Artists, Community, and the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in collaboration with the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College; Riverside Art Museum; Lancaster Museum of Art and History; and California State University, Northridge, Art Galleries.
Local Access is a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by LACMA as part of the Art Bridges Initiative.
All exhibitions at the Vincent Price Art Museum are underwritten by the Vincent Price Art Museum Foundation and East Los Angeles College.
Photo by Monica Orozco.