DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Art Dubai, the
Middle East’s largest annual
contemporary art fair, has featured for the first time digital works, as the
wealthy Gulf emirate seeks to position itself as a crypto-assets hub.
اضافة اعلان
This year, in its
15th edition, the three-day fair osted more than 100 local and foreign art
dealers, with an entire wing of 17 galleries and platforms dedicated to
showcasing and selling NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
NFT sales
platforms use the
blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies, and transform
anything from illustrations to memes into virtual collectors’ items that cannot
be duplicated.
Benedetta Ghione,
Art Dubai’s executive director, said NFTs, which burst into the mainstream last
year and are now traded at major auction houses, have drawn a lot of attention
in the UAE, already a leisure and business hub.
The increased
interest, along with Dubai’s “unique position” as “a growing crypto hub”,
prompted fair organizers to dedicate a new digital section, she told AFP at the
launch on Friday.
“We thought this
was the perfect time and the perfect place,” she said.
After signing an
agreement in December with Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange
by trading volume, Dubai — one of the seven emirates that make up the
UAE —
introduced last week a new virtual assets law and a regulatory authority to
oversee the sector.
‘Growing exponentially’
Dubai’s ruler Sheikh
Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum tweeted that such a
step “establishes the UAE’s position in this sector” and aims “to ensure
maximum transparency and security for investors”.
Local NFT
platforms have welcomed the move as good for business, with crypto holders
increasingly interested in digital art as a form of investment.
“The crypto
community is growing exponentially,” said
Jennifer Stelco, of NFT curatorial
platform Morrow Collective, which exhibited about 20 digital artworks at the
show, nearly all of them by UAE-based artists.
Among them is a
piece by Vesa, a renowned Finnish mixed media artist based in Dubai, whose
artwork combining painting and digitally-retouched images went on offer for 50
ethereum (
cryptocurrency), or about $127,000 at Sunday’s prices.
Stelco said that
one piece, by
Lebanese artist Magda Malkoun whose main work depicted her
hometown Beirut, was sold for three ethereum.
The global NFT
boom, with US artist Beeple selling an artwork at a record-breaking $69 million
last year, has encouraged the Middle East’s first online platform, Emergeast,
to turn to digital art.
Established in
2014 and dedicated to emerging artists from the region, Emergeast sees NFTs as
an opportunity for artists to “really expand” their audiences, reaching both
collectors and non-collectors, co-founder Nikki Meftah told AFP.
“The benefit also
is that all the artists get royalties for every sale,” she added.
Faced with the NFT
hype, Emirati sculptor and painter Aisha Juma started reworking some sketches
on a tablet a few months ago, although she stresses the importance of the art’s
message over its medium.
“There is
complexity because now people are interested in the medium... in the
technology,” she said.
“The technology is
extremely valuable. It gives me a platform to express more and to use more
tools, I am not denying that, but I would also love people to look at the art,
at what I am saying.”
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