Biography

Erasure Art Collective is an interdisciplinary arts group committed to researching and reinterpreting archival texts using visual, poetic, and performative erasure. The collective’s inaugural project—called Blackout—reimagines slave ads as erasure poems, and invites audiences to witness the onsite creation of reimagined works. Co-founders Shauntay Grant and Tyshan Wright began exhibiting together in 2017 when they created the mixed-media artwork Abeng for the national group exhibition Canada: Day 1 (Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21). A 2021-22 Artist-In-Residence Fellow for NSCAD University’s Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery, Tyshan Wright is the Atlantic region nominee shortlisted for the 2022 Sobey Art Awards. His work has been acquired by the Nova Scotia Art Bank and exhibited at Canadian galleries and museums including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada. Shauntay Grant curated the exhibition Stitched Stories: The Family Quilts (Dalhousie Art Gallery, 2016) and the multimedia installation Grandmother, Teach Me (Art Gallery of Ontario, 2017). An award-winning author and former poet laureate for the City of Halifax, she is an associate professor of creative writing at Dalhousie University.