Guarding Faces

Modomatic’s Guarding Faces with unsleepy eyes. Barong, Kirtimukha, and Drishti Gombe reborn as wild, round, neon faces wheat-pasted across downtown streets. They stare, they swallow evil, they never blink.
The city is being watched.

A circular street art piece depicting a stylized animal face with zebra-like stripes, large expressive eyes, and a yellow nose, on a vibrant green wall surrounded by various posters and graffiti.
A colorful sticker or artwork of a cartoonish face with exaggerated features, including large eyes, a mustache, and a big open mouth, pasted on a gritty wall surface. It is signed with the name 'Madomaleic' in the bottom right.
Street art graffiti featuring a stylized face with exaggerated features, painted with bold black lines and splashes of yellow, orange, and light blue on a weathered wall, surrounded by various tags and scribbles.
A collage of street art and stickers on a weathered metal surface. Prominent features include a colorful, cartoonish face with mismatched eyes, pointed teeth, and a tongue sticking out, surrounded by various smaller stickers and graffiti.
Colorful graffiti of a distorted face with exaggerated features, large eyes, wide grin, and various bright colors on a gray metal surface covered with tags and scribbles.
Colorful sticker of a stylized, cartoonish lion face with exaggerated features, placed on a worn green wooden surface with blue graffiti writing reading 'Lost in my 20's' above.
Street art featuring a stylized human face with exaggerated features, outlined in black, with colorful splashes in the background, and a small flame above the head, on a textured wall with other stickers and posters.
Street art sticker of a colorful, stylized animal face with exaggerated features, black outlines, and pastel watercolor-like splashes in the background, applied over a collage of torn posters and paper.
Street graffiti featuring a face drawn in black lines with yellow and orange highlights on a white wall. The face has large eyes, a broad nose, and a grinning mouth with teeth showing. Blue spray paint graffiti surrounds the face, and there are addit
Colorful street art of a stylized face with large eyes, wide mouth, and abstract features, featuring bright colors like yellow, orange, green, pink, and blue, on a metallic surface with graffiti in the background.
A colorful street art painting of a face with exaggerated features, including large headphones, purple eyebrows, wide eyes, and a wide mouth with protruding teeth, on a white wall.
A colorful, hand-drawn illustration of a stylized face with large, spiraled eyes and open mouth, outlined in black, with pastel colors inside. There are various stickers and posters around it, including a prominent sticker with the words "ME ANICO" a

City Spirits

Mythic faces watching the streets of New York.

Street art display on a brick wall featuring two circular face illustrations at the top with bold, colorful lines and exaggerated expressions. Below, there is a collage-like portrait of a man in a tuxedo holding a glass, with scribbled black graffiti
Street graffiti featuring two colorful, cartoonish face stickers with exaggerated features on a sticker-covered pole and wall.
Street art featuring two circular animal faces, one of a monkey and one of a feline, drawn with bold black outlines and colorful shading, on a brick wall with graffiti background.
Street art featuring two circular illustrations of colorful, stylized faces with exaggerated features and mustaches, on a beige wall near a brick corner and a water faucet.

The Eyes, the City’s Unsleeping Guards

I was born where the gamelan still argues with the night, where every doorway once wore a monster’s face so evil would trip over its own reflection.
I carried that old medicine across the ocean in my suitcase, folded between T-shirts: a handful of fearless stares.

Now I set them free below 14th Street.

In Soho’s iron canyons, on Tribeca’s hushed cobblestones, across the red lanterns of Chinatown and the graffiti psalms of the Lower East Side, through Nolita’s perfume, Two Bridges’ river wind, the Villages’ crooked laughter, Chelsea’s white galleries, and the Meatpacking District’s after-hours neon blood—I leave circles of color with eyes too large for any human face.

They are doing what they were born to do:

Stare back.
Swallow envy the way Kirtimukha swallows its own hunger.
Burn quietly like Drishti Gombe at the year’s end, taking every poisoned glance into paper flames no one will ever light.
Dance a silent Barong on brick and plywood, laughing at darkness until darkness forgets its lines.

I paint them round because circles have no corners for bad luck to hide.
I make them loud—acid pink, venom green, temple gold—so evil gets embarrassed and looks away first.

Every wall I paste becomes a threshold again.
Every shutter is a temple lintel.
Every sleepless corner, a village I once knew.

Walk these streets at any hour.
If a bulbous pair of eyes suddenly finds you under a streetlamp, don’t flinch.
Hold the gaze for the length of one held breath.

They have already swallowed what was chasing you.

They never sleep.
Their eyes never blink.
Downtown is under watch tonight and every night after.

Modomatic’s Masked Faces series brings Barong-and Kirtimukha-inspired faces to NYC streets
Modomatic’s Masked Faces series brings Barong-and Kirtimukha-inspired faces to NYC streets
Modomatic’s Masked Faces series brings Barong-and Kirtimukha-inspired faces to NYC streets