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# Why Do Emoji Fascinate Us?
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/why-do-emoji-fascinate-us/
- Published: 2013-12-13T23:32:32.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:01:05.000Z
- Description: Last night's opening of the Emoji Art and Design Show was a light-hearted celebration of those pictograms that have crept into our conversations and lives in every which way. The exhibition felt more design than art, and the pop-up marketplace featured a number of — you guessed it — emoji-related pr
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Art, Carla Gannis, Emoji, Eyebeam, Julia Kaganskiy, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![Genie Alfonzo, “Emojinal Art” (2013)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/12/enhanced-buzz-5935-1386695556-0.jpg)

Genie Alfonzo’s “Emojinal Art” (2013) is part of the “Emoji Art and Design Show.” (via Emoji Art and Design Show)

Last night’s opening of the [*Emoji Art and Design Show*](http://www.emojishow.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) was a light-hearted celebration of those pictograms that have crept into our conversations and lives in every which way. The exhibition felt more design than art, and the pop-up marketplace featured a number of — you guessed it — emoji-related products, including [vaginal emoji](http://instagram.com/p/h2fxciqeaU/?ref=hyperallergic.com), emoji-related smartphone cases, not to mention a whole array of emoji pins, jewelry, and nail art.

![Screen Shot 2013-12-13 at 5.31.00 PM](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/12/screen-shot-2013-12-13-at-5-31-00-pm.png)

In addition to the exhibition and marketplace, the event launched a special edition of the [*Womanzine*](http://www.toosexyandweird.com/a?ref=hyperallergic.com), which curiously describes itself as “about/for/not for women.” The publication produced a special print edition for the occasion, which features an exhibition checklist and essays on the prehistory of emoji, the whiteness of emoji, the tempura shrimp emoji, and even a poem … about emojis.

![Emoji nail art, check … special emoji edition of Womanzine, check …](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/12/womanzine-nails-320.jpg)

Emoji nail art, check … special emoji edition of Womanzine, check … (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)

Jenna Wortham, who’s best known as a tech reporter at the *New York Times*, cuts to the heart of our absurd love of these colorful Japanese Wingdings 2.0 when she writes, “Emoji don’t … make communication any clearer … \[they\] add a much-needed element of joy to the tedium of digital communication, which never has a clear end or beginning but just runs constantly like a lazy river or an extended, half-distracted chat over brunch.”

“I didn’t quite realize the resonance of emoji as a cultural subject until I was putting the *Womanzine* emoji issue together. The issue itself was by far our most popular ever,” Mercedes Kraus, editor of *Womanzine*, told me. “Emoji are just the latest in a long line of pictorial representation, but I think what we’ve proven with this show is how powerful and established they are now.”

When I asked Julia Kaganskiy, one of the event co-organizers, about her thoughts on emojis, she emphasized their universality. “Since they are a pictographic language, emoji are a universal communication medium that transcends cultures and social groups,” she said. “They may have specific meanings that sprout from a particular culture (as is the case with many of the traditional Japanese characters), but their ambiguity allows for easy appropriation and reinterpretation.”

![Antwaun Sargent  and Fahad Al-Hunaif rocking their KTHANKSBYE tshirts at the Emoji Art Show (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/12/11358330735_579247816d_z.jpg)

Antwaun Sargent and Fahad Al-Hunaif rocking their KTHANKSBYE emoji T-shirts at the “Emoji Art and Design Show”

One of the marketplace participants, Nick Dangerfield of [to.be](http://to.be/?ref=hyperallergic.com), suggested that a personal connection feeds our interest in the digital critters. “Only thing that comes to mind is that emojis are transparent beings like no other — every time someone texts using an emoji face, they imagine that the little face is a piece of themselves,” he said. “With this level of personal identification, it becomes absolutely impossible to abhor them. So the conclusion is that everyone loves them because everyone can see a bit of themselves in those little familiar faces.”

So, does that mean by looking at emoji we are really looking at ourselves?

![Carla Gannis's “The Garden of Emoji” (2013) was one of the works featured at the Emoji Art & Design Show.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/12/enhanced-buzz-10609-1386696436-6.jpg)

Carla Gannis’s “The Garden of Emoji” (2013) is one of the works featured at the Emoji Art & Design Show.

*The* [Emoji Art and Design Show](http://www.emojishow.com/events/?ref=hyperallergic.com) *exhibition continues through tomorrow, December 14, when there will also be a panel discussion, “I Have No Words: Emoji and the New Visual Vernacular,” featuring Fred Benenson, creator of* Emoji Dick*; Ramsey Nasser, computer scientist and artist; Zoë Salditch, communications director at Eyebeam; and Jenna Wortham, technology reporter for the* New York Times*. The conversation will be moderated by Lindsey Weber, co-founder of Forced Meme Productions and editor at* New York Magazine’*s Vulture.*