library of emoji art

the library of emoji art is an ongoing large-scale community art project in which hundreds of people create emojis using their own bodies. Each performance is site-specific, designed in collaboration with its community, and staged in public space. Participants for each emoji include schoolchildren, workers, fire fighters, aged care residents, police, sports clubs, church groups, and businesses — people who would not ordinarily share a space or a task all at the same time.

For each performance, Schwenk brings the community together in workshops to design their emoji. The resulting performance artwork is then documented as GIF, photograph, and film, and deposited into the library of emoji art — a growing archive of works from communities across the world. Each performance is paired with one of the most popular global emojis of that 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.

the library of emoji art turns the smallest unit of digital communication — a single emoji — into a reason for hundreds of people to be in the same place at the same time.