The market grew, and grew, reaching its zenith in late 2021, as Wall Street investors, tech-bros, and sketchy crypto types converged on virtual auctions and decentralised marketplaces, treating digital art not as an expansive new medium, but as a highly liquid (and untraceable) asset.
Then, with the same dizzying speed at which it crystallised, the NFT bubble burst. Between January and September of 2022, the market lost around 95 per cent of its value, rendering the majority of tokens worthless. The collapse was ultimately the result of diminished interest, as investors flocked to the newest shiny thing which was, and remains, AI.
Throughout the NFT boom, the public (and media) obsessed over mega-artists like XCOPY, Beeple and Pak, who were selling artworks for tens of millions of dollars, and, even more so, the non-art grifters promoting what they considered the investment opportunity of a lifetime, which included controversial youtubers Logan and Jake Paul, and tech-bro-come-motivational-speaker Gary Vee.
But, NFTs were never supposed to be mainstream; traded like stocks, peddled by the tech elite, produced by anyone with access to generative AI.
Long before investors ever caught wind of NFTs, a cohort of rebellious artists pioneered the concept, many coming from underground mediums like graffiti, digital and street art. The first NFT was minted all the way back in 2014, a pixelated, looping geometric animation called Quantum created by digital artist Kevin McCoy, and many others came during the medium’s formative years.
Now, post-boom, many of the same artists continue to explore the medium as it was originally intended; they see it as a way to create and sell art on their own terms, cutting out middlemen like gallerists and dealers.
One is Western Sydney-based digital artist Serwah Attafua, whose work exists at the intersection of video, gaming, and the internet itself. She’s been creating vivid 3D dreamscapes for 14 years and is relatively unphased by the boom and bust of the NFT market.
Her unique style, centered around afro-futuristic deities that are, at their core, expressions of self, set in surreal, utopian landscapes, caught the attention of major institutions and celebrities as the medium exploded onto the mainstream. Post-boom, though, she’s still busy as ever.
In recent years, she’s exhibited at the Biennale of Sydney, collaborated with musicians like Charli XCX and Genesis Owusu, and produced art for brands including Gucci, Valentino, Nike, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft and Samsung.
We sat down with Serwah to chat about the chaos that was the NFT era, from celebrities in her DMs to shady crypto deals, and the future of digital art now the dust has settled.
