Russian artist Olga Vishnevsky, better known as Pepelangelo on social media, creates paintings using one of the most popular internet memes, as her subject.
Pepe The Frog first appeared in Matt Furie’s comics called Boy’s Club in 2005 as the green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body. Platforms likes Myspace, 4chan and Gaia Online used it as a meme and had become one of the most famous memes used on 4chan and Tumblr by 2015. The character’s image had also been appropriated as one of the symbols of the controversial alt-right movement in 2016.
For Vishnevsky, she saw the green frog in a different way. To her, it is “not a symbol of hate, but a symbol of peace, love and solidarity.” As a matter of fact, she considered it as one of her favorite memes.
“I spent a lot of time on the Russian 4chan and Pepe the Sad Frog was one of my favorite memes. I started collecting rare Pepes and I had no idea about Matt Furie, Donald Trump, alt-right and so on. I just loved to save pictures with Pepe the Frog who was sad in different situations,” Vishnevsky told Bored Panda. She portrayed the popular meme in a positive way just like what the creator of Pepe intended.
