Three days after we have seen what kind of havoc those 9 CryptoPunks caused, in the up-coming Post-War & Contemporary Art Sale Lot there will be NFTs involved. Maya Asha McDonald begins her article on Tatler regarding this sales lot with:
-- Christie’s is returning to the lucrative medium with a hybrid auction in partnership with Rewind Collective and London gallerist Amar Singh. Fusing the acquisition of NFTs and physical works, the auction is primed to garner the attention of ultra-wealthy collectors
The works of interest are these:
Both these unique NFTs: Emily Ratajkowski's Buying Myself Back: A Model for Redistribution, and Rewind Collective's Remember Us IV (Watch Your Head), minted on 25 April 2021.
Christie's will also be offering five traditional paintings by women, which are accompanied by original Non-Fungible Token artworks created by the anonymous, feminist, and digital artist, Rewind Collective, where the NFT and IRL art worlds collide. The paintings, from some of the pioneers of female abstraction, are: Grace Hartigan's Pigeon Calls, Elaine De Kooning's Red Oxide Grotto (Cave #175), Helen Frankenthaler's Moon Spin, Yvonne Thomas' Untitled, and Lynne Drexler's Daffodil Gloucester. "I exhibited Rewind Collective at my gallery in 2017," said, an activist and gallerist, Amar Singh, who's teamed now with Christie's and Rewind Collective for the lots, "and I share their mission to champion women and underrepresented communities."
Unfortunately none of these seven NFT artwork can be bought with Ether, but what is important with them regardless is the natures of the selected works. From the blockchain perspective this will be the first time traditional paintings are accompanied with NFT artworks and more from a cultural aspect the gender equality Rewind Collective's NFTs, for the traditional artworks made by trailblazer artists, and the unique artwork from which a 10% portion of proceeds from the sale are to be donated to Vital Voices, a Non-Profit NGO who aim "to identify, invest in and bring visibility to extraordinary women around the world by unleashing their leadership potential to transform lives and accelerate peace and prosperity in their communities.", and Emily Ratajkowski's unique work, commenting on her experiences within art world's patriarchic tendencies and misogynistic structures, which the lot essay couldn't say the importance of this work better:
Photographed, publicized, promoted and propagated, Emily Ratajkowski (b. 1991) is intensely familiar with having her image wrested from her for another’s profit, as chronicled in her cataclysmic essay Buying Myself Back, --
-- Ratajkowski now performs her own conceptual work with Buying Myself Back: A Model for Redistribution (2021) in opposition to the ingrained systems of gaze designed to perpetually exclude the muse from capitalizing off her own features. With the advent of blockchain technology and the availability of the non-fungible token (NFT) as a viable digital medium, Ratajkowski boldly reclaims her image, and the commercial properties therein, by employing the NFT as a tradeable metaphor for that which has no physical embodiment. In carving its presence on the immutable, universal Ethereum blockchain ledger, the NFT facilitates Ratajkowski’s message in a way that breaks new ground for feminist art history and practice.
As a certificate of authenticity for the digital era – the very era, in fact, that allows for the consistent proliferation of Ratajkowski’s visage without her consent – the present token reinstates Ratajkowski’s agency over her own image by allowing her access to its monetary and symbolic value, both of which she and other women in similar professions have too often been deprived. In keeping with the conceptual spirit, the present lot is offered with an unknown estimate and open reserve, asking the market alone to determine the amount to which the muse is entitled for her image and relying on the smart contract inherent to the token platform to determine future royalties. In this way, Buying Back Myself: A Model for Redistribution embraces revolutionary NFT technology to restructure the valueless online image—here, of Ratajkowski standing in front of Prince’s Ratajkowski—into an exclusive commodity with a traceable, digital signature; the principle of scarcity that once solely belonged to material objects in the real world is now applicable to virtual multiples within the online sphere.
Rewind Collective declare their mission as
We are a digital arts collective aimed at addressing the gender and minority imbalances throughout the art world. We create original digital works, digital editions, and digital works in response to existing physical artworks. We aim to uplift women and minorities through our work, the largest groups of people who have been traditionally marginalised by the art world.
And the works they offer on May 14th auction on Christie's can be studied HERE, on their website, with each being described, the motifs revealed: honoring artists forgotten amid the patriarchal gaze, highlighting women and minorities in their work.
“Rewind Collective’s work highlights the underestimated role women have played in the history of the global struggle for equality and human rights, and challenges structures of power, authority, and ownership in the art world today."
? Katie A. Pfohl, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, New Orleans Museum of Art.
“I think this is a beautiful and important project which celebrates women and I am thrilled to be working with Christie’s and Rewind Collective to bring this to market. There's a lot of noise in the NFT market but when it comes to highlighting women and minorities, NFTs can be used as a powerful tool for positive change.”
? Amar Singh, Amar Singh Gallery, London
With many wonderful qualities and opportunities the auctioned NFT artworks show another valuable potential aid in the fight against the inequality that is incorporated in the art world's structures.
