Tears of joy emoji · library of emoji art · 2018

The library of emoji art is an ongoing large-scale public art project where hundreds of people unite to create emojis using their own bodies. Each performance is site-specific, designed in collaboration with its community and staged in a public space. Participants include schoolchildren, workers, fire fighters, aged care residents, sports clubs, church groups and businesses. People who would not ordinarily come together, come together to create a work of art.

Rehearsal, tears of joy emoji · library of emoji art · 2018

Rehearsal, schöppingen emoji · library of emoji art · 2018

For each performance, Sylvia brings the community together in workshops to design their emoji, which is then performed in public space. Each performance is paired with the most popular emoji of the year, creating a connection between individual communities and a shared digital culture.

The work asks what it means to communicate in the physical world at a time when so much of our social exchange has migrated online. Creating large-scale analogue versions of digital symbols in the presence of strangers is inherently playful and inherently social.