For his latest project, artist and photographer Justin Aversano (known for ‘Twin Flames’) set out with a simple compass: love. Just a camera, intuition and an unspoken promise to document humanity on all seven continents.
The result is ‘Moments of the Unknown’, a living archive of global intimacy, presented as an exhibition Glitch gallery in Marfa, Texas for Art Blocks Marfa Weekend this month and a documentary screening at the Crowley Theater down the road.
Declutter sat down with Aversano for an inside look at his journey, reflections and creative process. Initially, he said, the film was intended to be a much quieter affair.
“It would just be no sound most of the time,” he recalls.
But somewhere between continents, the project evolved into an audiovisual experiment, stitching together the hundreds of short video portraits with soundscapes drawn from humanity’s most iconic artifact of love and hope. All sounds come from the ‘Voyager Golden Record’, a gramophone record with sounds and images of Earth. Carl Sagan was the chairman of the NASA committee that put together the record, which was sent into space in 1977.
“I wanted to reintegrate that historic movement into culture and space exploration – and use it as the soundtrack for a film about cultures and continents around the world and how they are connected,” Aversano said.
Each location resonates with its own fragment of those sounds, while voices speak in 55 languages; United Nations delegates say just one word: Hello.
It all leads to the final line of the film: “Hello from the children of planet Earth.”
Love as a universal language
‘Moments of the Unknown’ is about love, but not just about romance; the kind of love extends to family, friendship and unity.
“What I discovered while photographing is that love has so many forms,” Aversano said. “It was about unity, closeness, intimacy. The love of humanity and the recognition that we are one human family.”
Aversano said he wasn’t looking for subjects for the daily 10-second portrait video. He woke up every morning not knowing who he would meet, with no diversity checkboxes or specific goals in mind – just human encounters as they happened. Children, the elderly, strangers, twins, entire families.
Even the recurring sound of heartbeats in the soundtrack is not abstract.
“That’s family,” he explained. “My father, my sister, my brother. Moments when I felt presence and love.”
Self-portraits, time capsules and twin flames
Aversano always gets involved in his projects, but quietly. In this one, his first appearance is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in a New Orleans barbershop.
“I just wanted to be a pillar in her portrait,” he said.
Another self-portrait appears at Stonehenge, on his birthday – a deliberate bridge back to his earliest work, ‘The Birthday Project’. He calls it ‘an Easter egg’, a thread that connects ten years of his art. People reappear over time. They age. Twins appear, old and new.
“I always come across twins,” he laughs, referring to one of his previous projects, Twin Flames – a project that caught fire with collectors after the photos of twin siblings were minted as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain in 2021. ended up at Christie’s auction house and earned famous admirers such as Snoop Dogg and Gary Vaynerchuk.
“I never say no,” he admitted. “They are twin flames.”
The most remote chapter, he said, took place in Antarctica: “A two-day boat from Argentina. Seven days there, two days back.”
When asked which country is his favorite, he replied in the abstract: “You can’t choose a favorite when it’s all one.”
Aversano recorded the project two years ago. He releases each portrait and video on the same calendar day it was shot. It started on April 8 and ends on April 7, 2026. Every night he wrote a diary entry about the person he met that day.
Aversano is now auction of every daily portrait as a single-edition NFT. He hasn’t missed a day. Every day at noon ET, he hosts an X Spaces to discuss the daily auction.
When asked what people should take away from the film, Aversano didn’t talk about legacy, sales or impact.
“Did you feel anything?” he asked. “That’s all I want.”
When asked about the reception he received last weekend in Marfa, where he was moved to tears, he replied, “I feel blessed and grateful. What more can you ask for?”
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