Sylvia Schwenk

The ‘library of emoji art’ is a large-scale community-oriented public art project that showcases  ‘emoji art’ created by cities/communities around the world, at different times and in response to different topics.

Each ‘emoji art’ is site-specific and the emoji – designed by the community during workshops – reflects the city/community’s identity. These socially engaged performances, like emoji, connect people and enhance communication across cultural and language divides.

As emoji are digital icons that help counter isolation and facilitate connection, each work of ‘emoji art’ created by a local community is paired with an ‘emoji art’ performance of one of the most loved emoji of the year. This will connect individual projects with the broader community of the world.

Each volume of ‘emoji art’ is made up of books of the drawings from workshops, archival material (radio programs, facebook pages and contributions), photographs, films and GIFs of the ‘emoji art’ performances.

The first volume in the library is ’schöppingen: emoji art’ which was created by over 200 Schöppingeners in Germany. This was performed together with ‘tears of joy: emoji art’.

I am in discussions with councils and communities in Sydney, and New York City to create ‘emoji art’ performances.