Project exploring the ever evolving new emoji language. More specifically, how emoji’s have been sexualised and used as a new method of sexting. The perhaps tenuous similarity between the female artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose paintings of flowers were sexualised and turned into something they were not, immediately surfaced in my initial research.

There is nothing subtle about this new emoji development. Kim Kardashian’s Kimoji’s explicitly interpret fruit and veg in to sexualised images. The whole notion of using other objects to describe certain body parts has been happening for years – especially in the art scene, take Georgio De Chirico’s ‘The uncertainty of the poet’ (1913) for example. However, it is now replacing words and is becoming more commonplace and acceptable, through the new social media world.

I decided to create a series of water colour paintings that parodied a meme that already existed online in a few variations. My imitation of the meme is done with the intent to be viewed as art. This changes the reading slightly, as I am presenting the fruit and veg not as emoji’s but as paintings of the actual objects that are depicted as emoji’s. The use of the watercolour implies artistic skill and holds no element of humour. My aim was for the style of painting to resemble the illustrations found in children’s books – for example, Eric Carle’s illustrations in ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ (1969). This is to further connote innocence in my paintings. In total, the series is made up of six paintings: Three female fruit (peach, melons, and cherry) and three male fruit and veg (banana, eggplant, and cucumber). The text is hand written, in capitals; reading the same only for the change in one adjective, which is done to differentiate between the two sexes. Additionally, it allows me to address an online, technical issue, without any use or resemblance to online visuals.