Displacement Posters

Displacement Posters

Project by Mónica Mesa (they/them) and Brittany Ballinger (she/her)

Inspired by acts of protest and fluorescent advertising posters from the 70s, Displacement Posters reconfigures a commercial medium to bring awareness to climate change as a gentrifying force, a phenomenon that results in the displacement of low-income people of color who can no longer afford to live in their homes and changes the cultural makeup of Miami-Dade County. The posters are installed across neighborhoods where this threat is prevalent: in-land, high elevation areas such as Little Haiti, Little River, Magic City, and Model City.

Whether the posters are mounted to chain-link fences, construction site walls, trees, or electrical poles, the idea is for them to treat their surroundings as an extension of the typeset page, thereby transforming the space of the city itself into a poem to be read. The posters showcase poems by Jessica Machado, Daniela Carolina Roger, Tiffany Walker, and Kayla (Jazzy) Wallace that Mesa and Ballinger met through O, Miami’s writing workshops and who were inspired by this phenomenon and its effects on our community.