Title: Erased American History (after erasure)
Date of Work: 2025
Size: 30" x 45"
Material: Chaulk Pastel on paper and eraser shavings
Synopsis: Erased American History is both an act of remembrance and reckoning. The work reimagines the 1863 photograph of "Peter," or "Gordon," the formerly enslaved man whose whip-scarred back became an emblem of abolition. Through erasure, the image dissolves into a field of fading red pigment--fragile, atmospheric, incomplete. The act of erasure here is not denial but transformation: the body becomes both ghost and monument, refusing disappearance. The red evokes blood, rust, and clay--signs of violence and endurance. Referencing Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing, the work asks not just what happens when an image is erased, but who has the right to erase. Created amid efforts to sanitize American history and remove Peter's image from museum view, the piece transforms absence into presence. Each stroke of the eraser becomes resistance--an insistence that even what is erased can still bear witness.