If you're walking along the east side of the Museum Square, you might see a glimmer of something new filling in the cracks of the pavement... Earlier this month, Bloomington became the first city in the United States to feature an original installation from Ememem, the globetrotting street artist based in Lyon, France.
Ememem is an anonymous artist who "flacks" at night so their work is discovered at dawn. "Flacking" is a term the artist has coined to describe the process of creating mosaics with geometric motifs in cracked sidewalks and facades. The tiles used in the Bloomington installation were locally sourced from Keen Tile in Normal, Illinois.
Ememem was in Bloomington to discuss a future project, widely speculated to be for the Charlie Jobson Natural Play Park at Colene Hoose Elementary. After the artist departed from the Twin Cities, they visited Chicago, where they also installed a one of a kind installation along the sidewalk of Michigan Avenue. But don't be fooled, the first Ememem artwork in the country was not in Chi-town, but rather just down Route 66 in Historic Downtown Bloomington, Illinois on the Museum Square.
To see more of Ememem's work from around the world, check out @ememem.flacking on Instagram.
