Smiley Vanitas 8 Painting

This work is a part of a series titled Smiley Vanitas. The project is the result of a combination of my interest in traditional painting and the role of identity in digital communication. Emoticons or “smileys” are widely used in texting and usually convey emotion or tone of the message. Taken out of their natural habitat of the phone or computer screen and placed on canvas, they invite the viewer to consider relationship between the history of art and the issue of identity within contemporary digital culture, as well as temporality of all things virtual and real.