TO BE REMEMBERED, ONE MUST FIRST BE SEEN. And yet throughout history, countless artists have had their identities obscured, their stories rewritten or silenced, and their legacies reshaped by omission and institutional neglect. For those of us who are queer and working in the visual arts, we continue to see this manifested in museum exhibitions that sidestep references to LGBTQ+ identity; gallery labels that don’t acknowledge queer subject matter; and narratives that focus on heteronormative relationships. The rigid demand for strict documentation as a prerequisite for identifying queerness has created a false standard, one that actively excludes lived realities. Many queer artists were compelled to adopt closeted behaviors in response to legal and social persecution. This should not justify exclusion from the historical record. As institutions are increasingly being called to reckon with their omissions, it should inspire historians, curators, and writers to engage in more nuanced and interpretive approaches to telling fuller, more dimensional stories of queer artists’ lives.

Erasure Gallery is our response to the systemic silencing of queer narratives. It is a temporary and occasional action by Curious Matter to transform the gallery into a site of remembrance, reflection, and resistance. By draping our sign in lavender cloth and adopting this provisional name, we acknowledge the countless queer artists, writers, thinkers, collectors, and appreciators whose full stories have been lost to systemic bias and archival silence. As both a meditation and a call to action, Erasure Gallery advocates for a more expansive approach to how we consider, study, and honor queer lives in the visual arts, to foster a more inclusive and honest understanding of our cultural heritage.

Through this project, we call for a critical shift in art historical and curatorial practices. We seek to:

• recover histories that have been intentionally obscured, recognize hidden or coded narratives, and give voice to those silenced in their era and beyond.

• expose the inadequacies of conventional attribution and labeling methods when applied to marginalized communities and advocate for interpretive frameworks that value context and nuance.

• challenge the notion that a lack of explicit documentation justifies the omission of queerness from historical accounts.

• support and strengthen institutional efforts to combat cultural homophobia, enabling more inclusive readings of both historical and contemporary narratives.

• encourage methodologies such as “queer hermeneutics” or “archival intuition”—approaches that accept ambiguity and empower scholars to grapple openly with intentionally hidden narratives, and make informed and conscientious assertions about queerness despite the limitations of the historical record.

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For this iteration of Erasure Gallery, we present new work by Raymond E. Mingst, a continuation of his ongoing project Banderoles, the Apophatic Sky, and the Memorializing Artifact. In this installation, Mingst reflects on the fragility of language, memory, and the queer body. A series of three dye sublimation photographic prints on fabric—each measuring three by six feet, echoing the dimensions of panels in the AIDS Memorial Quilt—extends his exploration of loss, language, and our need to communicate, and the hope that, somehow, the echoes of lost voices might still be heard.

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Raymond E. Mingst is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages with historical erasure and cultural memory to honor and memorialize mentors lost to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A recipient of the 2021 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, Mingst is co-founder of Curious Matter, and has exhibited, curated, and collaborated with numerous galleries and institutions.