Kim Hyun Jung x KakaoTalk Emoticons [Coy Story]

For the first time, expressions and gestures were drawn onto figures that had long stood still. On September 27, 2016, a KakaoTalk emoticon set prepared in secret for a long time launched through Kakao’s artist collaboration category, ‘Studio X.’ It captured the many faces of the Naesoong girl’s everyday life — oversleeping, racing breathlessly to avoid being late, a mishap at the billiard table, food photos and ‘sulstagram,’ and the moment of declaring ‘I’ll diet starting tomorrow.’ The artist had long wished for everyone to be able to own a piece of art in their smartphone, and the emoticons became her answer. Among them, Naesoong: Keep the Change — showing the character sprawled in a taxi, showing off her embroidered shoes — struck a particular chord and was also made into an emoticon; the license plate reading ‘Seoul 29 Kim 1988’ is her own secret signature, encoding her age, surname, and birth year at the time the piece was painted. Watching a refined work of art step outside the gallery to be shared as a ‘meme’ in the conversations we have every day was, for the artist, a deeply joyful experience.