Adapted from the Wellcome Collection’s description about the artwork:

How happy do you feel right now? How satisfied do you feel with your life in general? Updating Happiness is an emotional check-in device that playfully draws attention to small daily pleasures that make us feel good.

We invite you to reflect on these questions in a short online survey, which has been adapted from those asked by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to measure wellbeing. In return you will receive a unique, personalised quote based on your answers, which will be added to a growing collective archive of reflections on happiness.

Posavec’s work plays with inspirational quotes that pervade social media, redesigning them to be more ambiguous and strange. Her work encourages us to interrogate the culture of toxic positivity that promotes depictions of impossibly perfect lives. Can these messages, widespread on platforms such as Instagram, be harmful to our mental health?

Commissioned by Wellcome Collection as part of the season On Happiness. Digital development and installation by Kin.