If you've been on the Instagram Explore tab ever, you've probably come across his colourful, mosaic-like portraits of the world's biggest celebrities, rappers, random memes and anything currently in the pop culture zeitgeist. Look closer, and you'll realise that these portraits are made up of hundreds, sometimes thousands of iPhone emojis in all different colours.
This is the work of Yung Jake, an artist, rapper and enigma.
And while they look like extremely time-consuming masterpieces, Yung Jake works fast. Within hours, he'll respond to a meme or pop culture moment with an emoji portrait, including a portrait of the thick-neck-guy, doctors operating on a grape and Stan Lee when he passed away.
Emoji art is not his only strength, either - he's shown in galleries around the world with other works that flip and comment on consumerism, fame and popular culture.
The LA artist has been profiled a bunch of times by a ton of magazines, as well as Australia's own SBS, but the intriguing Yung Jake prefers to do his interviews via text message, he tells W Magazine.
"basically i find a good image and try to represent the ppl as good as i can,” he says. “it's not very deep …or high concept like my other stuff … i just happened to be good at it so i did a bunch of celebrities … i sent a lot to my famous friends [knowing] they'd post.”
Love his style or hate it, Yung Jake's Instagram feed is super cool to look at. There's even a tool you can use to draw with emojis instead!
