Justin Aversano: “We've been creating these works here for over two years now. I had the concept, and I've been working on this since 2016. And since March of 2021, we've been silk-screening this project to be minted on the blockchain.”

The exhibition will feature 78 limited edition silkscreen prints attached to NFTs that reimagine a tarot deck through the medium of photography. The 22 major arcana (gold) and 56 minor arcana (silver) portraits printed on papyrus capture Aversano’s local healers, spiritualists, creatives and family in handmade analog prints which the artist deems “hybrid photographic neo-hieroglyphs”.

Smoke and Mirrors presents a timely exploration of memory, history, spiritualism and psychogeography of Aversano’s sitters with a nod to the global growing interest in technopaganism and spirituality expressed through photography. Marrying the worlds of occult and crypto, Aversano’s evocative portraits showcase a sense of community, family, love, grief and individualism. Printing on papyrus, Aversano draws the comparison between ancient Egyptian scrolls and NFT photography. Used to document important information from religious texts to legal documents, the papyrus scrolls were carefully passed down through generations, much like how Aversano is using photography to document the world, and NFTs are being used to preserve digital assets today. The artist entwines the private with the public by aligning an evocative portrait of his father standing by the grave of Aversano’s late mother for a card titled “Death” alongside healers and spiritualists which the artist has encountered during his Hero’s Journey through grief.