Justin Brice Guariglia
WE ARE THE ASTEROID
2025 It's Not Easy Being Green
Justin Brice Guariglia
Medium:
Sculptural installation
Displayed:
Across the UK and Brazil 7 Oct - 10 Nov
Artwork Description:
WE ARE THE ASTEROID is a public art intervention that focuses our mind on ecological thought. Appropriating a solar-powered LED message board typically used on roadways, Guariglia shares surprising poetry, metaphor, and humour to draw in diverse audiences, breaking down barriers to enable important conversations about our current ecological crisis. Highway signs evoke authority and alertness as they caution passers-by. Recontextualising these, Guariglia plays with viewers’ expectations, and draws attention to our complicit use of unsustainable systems of creation and consumption.
Artist's Comment:
At this critical juncture, art must be used as a positive force for social and political change, and to help open our minds to expansive ecological action.
Bio:
Justin Brice Guariglia (b.1974, New Jersey, USA) is an American artist whose work explores the relationship between humans and the natural world. Frequently collaborating with scientists, poets, and philosophers, Guariglia’s research-based practice bridges art and science, catalysing vital dialogue around ecological themes. Through methodical investigation and creative translation, his work seeks to challenge viewers to perceive our environment through new lenses. By disrupting everyday life, his work transforms abstract ecological concepts into visceral experiences that seek to plant an “ecological thought” in the viewer’s mind.
Notable collaborations include a series of 2015 missions with NASA scientists documenting Greenland’s rapidly changing ice, images from which were used as foundational source material in his paintings and prints. Guariglia’s recent public artworks, notably his takeover of London’s Somerset House, REDUCE SPEED NOW!, offer a democratic, accessible way to challenge prevailing narratives. By making ecological issues tangible and immediate, his work aims to elevate public consciousness and inspire meaningful action beyond gallery walls.
Curator's Comment:
In this piece, Justin Brice Guariglia cleverly uses the familiar to make us think about issues we might prefer to keep at a distance. We are all so used to watching disaster movies, where the threat to our survival comes from elsewhere – aliens or asteroids from outer space. By placing the phrase ‘WE ARE THE ASTEROID’ on a structure so clearly recognisable as a warning sign, the artist demands we consider whether, it is us who are the real danger. Once this thought gets under your skin it’s impossible to shift.
About
Justin Brice Guariglia
Credit & Notes
Photo credit: © Studio Justin Brice Guariglia. Photo: L. Goulet / The Climate Museum