It’s easy to compare fame and the “if a tree falls in the forest…” saying, but are we really ready to imagine how fame, hype, and virality really shapes (or warps) the future?

A Thousand Eyes Upon Us explores the paradox of fame and its “intoxicating allure and corrosive effects”, as artist Mark Dawn Arcamo puts it. He paints fractured faces, their features “distorted by the weight of public scrutiny”. Through his acrylic portraits, he invites viewers to confront their fascination with fame. He chews on the idea of fame—injected with steroids since the Internet happened—and how the need for external validation harms or helps us. On one hand, the Internet has connected us in the most convenient and innovative ways, but on the other hand, it has created some very real and felt psychological problems and further isolates some people.

As we’ve learned in recent years, techno-horror turns out to be more entertaining as a fictional screenplay plot. Seeing it play out in real life has its equally entertaining and redemptive moments, but the Orwellian potential of fame at a quantifiable, controllable scale doesn’t quite sound as lighthearted.  As our ways of perceiving, judging, and seeing others and ourselves evolve together with the mirrors and lenses of society, it helps to step back and take regular breaks from our projected personas and our fixation with unhealthy influencer obsessions to look inwardly again and notice the beauty of quieter, sometimes unspoken things like creating for creation’s sake and being kind like our lives depended on it (because it does, and not only when we have some sort of camera rolling).

Arcamo asks: Can we escape the hunger for recognition, or are we all trapped in this gilded cage?

In the end, Arcamo’s art “serves as a mirror” that “reflects our collective obsession, urging us to question what truly matters”. That perhaps, beyond the spotlight, lies “a quieter beauty: the authenticity of self-expression, the joy of creation, and the resilience of the human spirit”.

– Nikki Ignacio