Nocturne Artist Talk – Erasure Art Collective

Erasure Art Collective (EAC) is an interdisciplinary arts group committed to researching and reinterpreting archival texts using visual, poetic, and performative erasure. Co-founders Shauntay Grant and Tyshan Wright have been collaborating and exhibiting together since 2017 when they created the multimedia artwork ‘Abeng’ for Canada: Day 1, a national group exhibition presented by the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. EAC’s inaugural project, called BLACKOUT, has been presented at Nocturne (2022), Atlantic Arts Symposium (2022), and the Canadian Association for Theatre Research Conference (2023). As artists with ancestral ties to the arrival of Black Loyalists, Jamaican Maroons, and Black Refugees to Nova Scotia in the late 1700s and early 1800s, creating art that illuminates African Nova Scotian and African diasporic histories and experiences is a vital part of EAC’s research and creative work. The collective’s work is multilayered and highlights a research-creation approach to interpreting archival texts, with BLACKOUT championing a multidisciplinary creative approach to the study and presentation of slavery in Atlantic Canada.