Artist · Istanbul
Didem Medine İnci
arteemoji — I turn the screen’s smallest signs into painting’s largest subject.
Artist, illustrator and art director. Painting is my first language; today I speak it through the symbols of the screen. A heart, a smile, an eye… I take the signs we consume in seconds and slow them down, enlarge them, give them color. I call this signature language, developed since 2016, arteemoji.
When Warhol hung Campbell’s soup cans on the wall, his subject was the object of mass consumption. My subject is the symbol of mass communication: the emoji — today’s shared emotional alphabet. I lift it out of the speed of the screen and into the language, and the time, of painting.
— Didem Medine İnciThe Head of Instagram shared my work from his own profile.
“@didemmedineinci is an amazing emoji artist… Give her a follow.”
Adam Mosseri, from his own profile in November 2024: “@didemmedineinci is an amazing emoji artist who captures her work within the Stories editor then shares it as a reel.” A recognition few artists in digital practice ever reach.
The worlds I return to
The worlds of arteemoji
Each symbol is a theme, a gravity of its own. Every world I return to carries a different emotion, a different color.
“There is a tradition of art made from the ready-made — Duchamp brought the urinal, the chair, into art. I work with today’s ready-mades: the digital signs. The emoji is my fountain.” — Didem Medine İnci