Portrait of Michelle Jaffé

Educated as an American teenager in London, Jaffé earned a BA Honours in Fine Arts & French Literature from the University of East Anglia in England. Childhood exposure to Asian art influenced her visual sensibility. Eastern depictions of space and their evocation of so much with such economy, informs her work’s formal clarity.

Jaffé has exhibited at NYU Audio Lab 230 at 370 Media Commons, Brooklyn, NY, The New Media Gallery, Vancouver, Beall Center for Art + Technology, UC Irvine, Duke University Power Plant Gallery, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, Harvestworks Govenor's Island, WhiteBox, Culture Lab LIC, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Milton Art Bank, PA, Morlan Gallery at Transylvania University, Lexington, KY and solo shows in New York City at 11 Rivington, Bosi Contemporary, Wald & Po Kim Foundation, Susan Berko-Conde Gallery. 

Jaffé was awarded a 2025 Pollinator grant, a New Works Commission grant from Harvestworks Digital Media in 2023, 4 Individual Artist grants from NYSCA, 3 QAF grants from Queens Council on the Arts and is a 4 time fiscally sponsored artist of NYFA and has been a panelist for NYSCA. 

Jaffé was Artist-in-Residence to the Computer Music Department at Brooklyn College and was awarded residencies at the Exchange Museum and The Newlyn Gallery in England, MacDowell Colony and Djerassi.

Video work, “Tea with Estelle” is in the museum collection of Listasafn Islands National Gallery of Iceland. Jaffé has 30 accessory design works in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology and Palais Galliera - Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris. 

American sculptor and intermedia artist Michelle Jaffé creates time-based experiential and immersive works that prompt active listening and awareness in space. Her sculpture, sound and video installations present complex experiential propositions. To enter them, can increase awareness of the volatile structures percolating in the underbelly of society. Jaffé sculpts sound in space, through cutting edge programing in SuperCollider, Reaper, Max & speaker technologies of Holosonic & Wave Field Synthesis and geo-location through Wi-Fi, Cellular Data, UWB and Bluetooth. She works with sound to expand sculptural experience, as a gestalt to forge new neural connections, by engaging mind, body & limbic brain simultaneously.

Seminal influences: at a young age, Jaffé was transported by the immensity of Stanley Kubrick’s vision for “2001”: powerful images paired with compelling sound design. Other influences are LaMonte Young's "Well Tuned Piano" where overtones hang in the air as cumulative vibrational mass; and experiencing the physical, disorienting effect of Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arcs”. Jaffé shares a sensibility for scale with Jackson Pollock and a sense for the comedic and the theatrical with Oskar Schlemmer, Robert Wilson and Pina Bausch.

Photo of Michelle Jaffé working on Wappen Field in her studio
Photo of Michelle Jaffé in her studio

Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae •

Photo of Soul Junk projection in Michelle Jaffé's studio
Photo of Michelle Jaffé in Wappen Field installation in her studio
Work in progress in Michelle Jaffé's studio

Artist Statement

Artist Statement •

11/11/23

I create time-based experiential, often immersive works that prompt active listening and corporeal awareness through sculpture, sound and video installations. Since 2003 I work with sound as sculptural material to forge new neural connections. Since 2011 I have worked with vocalists, creating several 27–35-minute compositions. Simultaneously engaging mind and body produces a deeper understanding. I place sound 3-dimensionally in space, programing in SuperCollider, Reaper, Max, deploying cutting edge speaker technologies of Holosonics & Wave Field Synthesis. In my recent New Works Residency exhibition “LocaleS3” at Harvestworks/Govenor’s Island (September 1–October 29, 2023) I programmed sound in 3D virtual shapes spaced around the room. I orchestrate the score in such a way that visitors activate different components of the composition simply by moving through space. Engaging audience thusly, makes them co-composers of a non-linear work as they play the room as an instrument. I accomplish this through position tracking antennas & an app on iPhones.

As participants recognize themes that plague humanity, they become stakeholders in the complex proposition/installations I conceive & produce. I am the sculptor, librettist, composer & videographer. Each work brings sound ever more 3-dimensionally into the participant’s experience puncturing their rational and linguistic defenses.

WAPPEN FIELD (2003–2015) is a confrontational phalanx of 12 chrome plated steel helmets recruiting visitors to enter and hear a 27-minute vocal composition. Each helmet is a resonant chamber, where their dedicated speakers transform the sculptural installation into an immersive audio environment.

SOUL JUNK (2013–2019) is an immersive 3-channel video/sound installation that explores the raw emotions, power & intent conveyed & betrayed by the human voice & facial expression. In the age of the selfie, SOUL JUNK places you inside a female's mind at work, one long oppressed by a power that needs to prevail at all costs.

MURMUR/MUTTER/YELL (2019–) unveils the powerful forces at work in the dark matter of connectivity, exposing how we, the raw material of 21st century colonization, are ripe for manipulation.

GRIFTER’S Gambit (2023–) is an operatic, tragicomic audio/video installation, surrounding the audience in a multi-sensory experience. The libretto attests to archetypal behavior, satirizing foibles that bring us repeatedly into conflict. We experience the collision of personal, social & political desire; pressures that constantly jockey for power & influence.