Sarah Shinhyo Kim is a Korean-American artist currently living and working in the United States. She studied Fine Arts at Cornell University and earned her BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design. A talented eyewear and accessory designer, she was shortlisted as a finalist for the prestigious CFDA Award. After many years in the fashion industry, in 2014 Kim made the leap to becoming a full-time artist.

As a way to explore human communication and relationships, Kim’s work focuses on the increasing popularization of ‘emoticon’ pop-imagery in the past decade. While these images, known colloquially as ‘emojis,’ are vehicles of individual emotional expression, their universal and semantically rich nature allows us to transcend cultural and linguistic barriers. In her work she aims for the harmonious consolidation of various emotions and expressions. She begins by drawing clusters of emoticons portraying different states of mind. She then overlaps and connects them to form a unified larger image. Her message is simple; despite everyone’s uniqueness and differences, balance and harmony can be achieved in human relationships.