FOMO comes to us in an era of user error, collective insecurity, and evolving non-verbal cues. In 2015, Apple introduced a new line of emojis, including 198 additional national flags and revised preexisting icons with new, racially diverse designs. The update gave users the ability to send and receive characters with five possible skin and hair pigmentations. To those still putting off the latest update, these characters remained invisible- replaced with a “question mark box” or “alien” character. The exhibition’s title is an amended version of contemporary acronym “FOMO,” or “Fear of Missing Out,” commonly used to describe the anxiety and dread experienced as a byproduct of social media’s culture of connectivity. In the gaps between identity and persona, we may find infinite intersections of visibility and erasure; fear and myth. The impossibility of ever completely identifying oneself in a single instant is a prevailing failure: a glitch, an event, and finally, an icon.
