The introduction of emojis 20 years ago has definitely changed the way we communicate. Our language has become interspersed with these pictorial signs that are joyful and ambiguous at the same time.

Rob Pruitt’s Gimme a Hug, 2017, vinyl on refrigerators.Rob Pruitt’s Gimme a Hug, 2017, vinyl on refrigerators.

An exhibition, currently on at Blitz in Valletta, is inspired by this phenomenon and takes its title from an emoji that was named Word of the Year by Oxford University Press in 2015. Named Face with Tears of Joy, this emoji was the first pictorial sign to receive this honour.

“Through emojis, the threshold between adulthood and childhood has become very thin. We continuously use them in conversation. There is little distinction between professional and family conversations nowadays; texts have become increasingly informal,” curator Sara Adolfi Agostini said.

Emojis, together with gifs, memes, social media and video games have seeped into our lives and this is inevitably reflected in contemporary artworks.

“Artists are affected by our daily behaviour. Communication and globalisation have become two main areas of research in contemporary art,” Ms Adolfi Agostini said.

The exhibition brings together nine international artists, most of whom have exhibited in major exhibitions and important bi-annuals. Here they present various points of view on the subject, while also delving into social, political and economic concerns.

“They use a new kind of aesthetic. There is a connection with pop art but their work is less celebratory and more critical,” the curator points out.

The opening piece is British artist Andy Holden’s Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape (2011-17), a two-channel one-hour-long video in which an avatar of the artist explains and illustrates the ‘10 laws of cartoon logic’ using hundreds of clips from cartoons, documentaries, news broadcasts and YouTube videos.

Simon Denny’s Founders.0 (study), 2019Simon Denny’s Founders.0 (study), 2019

“This work mixes seriousness with playfulness and questions possible overlaps between these different realities,” Ms Adolfi Agostini said.

Polish painter Paul Sochacki intentionally uses childish aesthetics to delve into more series subjects. In Smoking Kills, he revisits the theme of Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, using cartoonish characters such as those of a dolphin and a mouse, together with a floating sentence ‘We are humanity no nationality’, to reveal that his underlying message about migration.

In Self-Reflection, featuring a headless swan, and Untitled, depicting a heart-shaped spider, he further questions ‘identity’ in Western societies.

In the same space, one finds US-based Argentinian artist Amalia Ulman’s online performance, Privilege.

Artists are affected by our daily behaviour

Her work, which recalls the make-believe games of children, was timed with the 2016 US presidential election. Split over three screens of old TV sets, the video shows a business middle-class and pregnant woman as she tries to find her comfort zone of privilege within a polarised system of values.

She is also the mirror of an undecided electorate and a testimonial of bizarre advertising.

Berlin-based Australian artist Simon Denny’s latest artwork Founders.O (study) (2019) is a working prototype of a board game based on Settlers of Catan, a very popular game with tech billionaires like LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and PayPal’s Peter Thiel.

Paul Sochacki’s Smoking Kills, 2019, 130 x 155 cm, oil on canvasPaul Sochacki’s Smoking Kills, 2019, 130 x 155 cm, oil on canvas

The players of the game seek to leave their dying world to settle in New Zealand and eventually conquer the moon and Mars.

Italian artist Serena Vestrucci’s Orecchino di Stagione (2017) presents a 1:1 scale model of bronze cherries joined at the tip of the petiole.

“This recalls a children’s game involving cherries but through the use of bronze, which has a monumental aspect to it in art history, these become eternal symbols of life where feelings, values and entertainment have no price tag,” Ms Adolfi Agostini explains.

In a corner of a room, one finds US artist Rob Pruitt’s Gimme a Hug (2016), in which he draws on one of the most humble of modern appliances – the refrigerator − to portray a parent-child relationship.

Two fridges in a corner of a room each contain food and drink items which the parent and the child would consume.

Local artist Alexandra Pace presents her third video project, Corridorworld (2019), in which she uses fragments of corridor scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to build a scenario in which the four protagonists appear trapped, looped in a state of perpetual pursuit.

“I use existing narrative, deconstruct it to build new narratives,” Ms Pace said.

“You don’t know who is chasing who. The child may seem in peril, but not only.”

Maurice Mbikayi, from the Democratic Republic of The Congo, reflects on the past, present and future and explores the contradictions of technological progress in Façade 2 (2018), a mask − a symbol of African tradition and culture and which resembles a child’s toy – made of the components of old keyboards.

The exhibition ends with an installation by Cory Arcangel, a US artist based in Norway and a pioneer of computer technology.

Titled Vomit/Lakes (2015), his work features a flat screen TV showing a vomit emoji, manipulated with a 1990s Java aplet titled ‘Lake’ to create a seemingly liquid reflection.

Through this work, he addresses how audience engagement with digital culture can occur offline.

Face with Tears of Joy runs at Blitz until June 14. Opening hours are from Tuesday to Friday from 1 to 6pm and on Saturday from 10am to 1pm. For more information, visit https://thisisblitz.com.

Serena Vestrucci’s Orecchino di stagione (Seasonal Earring], 2017, bronze, lost wax casting.Serena Vestrucci’s Orecchino di stagione (Seasonal Earring], 2017, bronze, lost wax casting.

Maurice Mbikayi’s Façade 2, 2018, computer keys, fibreglass and resin.Maurice Mbikayi’s Façade 2, 2018, computer keys, fibreglass and resin.

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