Natasha Lelenco, Emoji Double Portrait, Acrylic and Spray Paint on Canvas, 2025

Details

Description

This large-format acrylic portrait presents a doubled figure that reflects the tension between individuality and multiplicity in contemporary identity. The … Read more This large-format acrylic portrait presents a doubled figure that reflects the tension between individuality and multiplicity in contemporary identity. The Two Ones forms part of Natasha Lelenco’s ongoing You Are The One project, a series that examines how digital culture reshapes the idea of the self through repetition, emotional coding and avatar-like representation. Working with acrylic, spray paint and Posca markers on canvas, the artist develops a language that merges emojis, kawaii aesthetics, pareidolia and screen-based palettes. In this work, two interconnected figures appear as affective clones, their mirrored posture suggesting both intimacy and duplication. The blue and green skin tones refer to the artificial chromatic spectrum of digital interfaces, while the characters’ simplified faces and rounded noses evoke the economy of emotional signs used in online communication. Their tattooed arms combine botanical motifs, miniature symbols and short fragments of text, functioning as a hybrid form of annotation that merges personal memory with digital markup. This interplay between sign and body reflects how contemporary identities become layered, replicated and circulated within algorithmic environments. The composition foregrounds the political dimension of cute aesthetics, which in this series operates as a device of gentle dissent. The figures’ softness and simplified features conceal a subtle tension, pointing to the pressures of constant visibility and emotional legibility in digital life. By translating these virtual codes into a materially layered surface, the painting creates a friction between the replicable logic of the screen and the singularity of the handmade. The work is painted on a single canvas and ships rolled in a reinforced cardboard tube to ensure safe international transport. Once stretched, its vertical scale restores the full spatial dynamic of the intertwined figures and their shared presence. Medium: Acrylic, spray paint and Posca markers on canvas Dimensions: 162 × 97 cm (unframed) This piece is attributed to the mentioned designer/maker. It has no attribution mark and no
official proof of authenticity,
however it is well documented in design history. I take full responsibility for any authenticity



issues arising from misattribution See less