Michelle Lisa Polissaint’s installation Scramble features a Miami-themed board game based on the popular game Scrabble. Unlike Scrabble, Michelle’s game was created to suit Miami’s multilingual audience, allowing users to play in English, Haitian Kreyol, and Spanish simultaneously. This recreates a common Miami moment where the three languages can be heard in one space, a gentle melding meant for meaningful engagement amongst those who would otherwise be inhibited by language barriers.
Michelle created Scramble in response to an open call that encouraged artists to consider how the intersection of art and play lends itself to interactivity and cultivating community: to explore how games, for example, can lead players through space, time, ideas, and experiences, serving as opportunities for critical connection. For Michelle, these ideas are inextricable from language: “As a person who spent many of my early years in Miami struggling to communicate, I understand how important language can be to sharing space with others.”
Equipped with multilingual thesauruses and adorned with her specially-designed wallpapers, Scramble is an intimate environment for playfulness and spontaneous encounters. For this installation, Michelle takes inspiration from shared spaces like the kitchen table and the living room where we’re called to collectively gather, rest, and enjoy.
About the Artist
Michelle Lisa Polissaint (B. 1991) is a Haitian-American visual artist, arts organizer, and consultant based in Miami, Florida. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Florida International University with a concentration in Photography and Fiber-based painting with a minor in Art History. She has also completed coursework in non-profit management at Johns Hopkins University.
As an artist, she explores the nature of human interaction through textiles and photographs. Her organizing practice is focused on overlapping art, community, and activism. She produces community-based activations and encourages artists and community members to form collaborative relationships.
Her work has been shown internationally at various institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta Contemporary, the Girls’ Club Collection, and most recently La Villa du Parc. She is a current studio resident at Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, Florida.
For more information about the artist and her work, please access:
https://www.michellelisap.com/ / @lichellemisa