The project The Currency began in 2021 with 10,000 original pieces accompanied by NFTS (non-fungible tokens).
Over the course of the exhibition, at a specified time each day until October 30th, Damien Hirst is burning hundreds of his own artworks which were sold as fungible tokens.
‘A lot of people think I am burning millions of dollars of Art but I am not. I am completing the transformation of these physical artworks into NFTS by burning the physical versions.’
Whenever valuable contemporary artworks are burned, media attention is drawn in droves, a fact that was likely considered by Damien Hirst.
The artworks were created in 2016 with enamel paint on handmade paper and each was numbered, titled, stamped and signed.
Hirst described his project to “The Art Newspaper” as his “most exciting by far,” touching on the “idea of art as a currency and a store of wealth.” It’s no accident that governments decorate coins and notes with art: “They do it so that we trust in money. Without art, it’s hard for us humans to believe in anything.”
But what is this burning doing other than questioning the ownership of analogue art or digital art? Not much, according to art critic and curator Kolja Reichert.
For Reichert, NFTs are much more about circulation as opposed to the manner by which artworks have traditionally been collected and owned. He believes there is a lot of potential in blockchain technology that artists could also use to comment on social issues.
For example, the Balot NFT project by Renzo Martens puts digital ownership of culture back into the hands of the many and helps buy back land once stolen. In a radical new model of restitution, NFT technology becomes a tool for decolonization.
The Balot sculpture was carved in 1931 in Congo to protect the people from the evil spirit of beheaded Belgian officer Maximilien Balot and make him work for the Pende People.
The sculpture is currently held in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts(VMFA)in Richmond,.
through the minting of a digital version of the sculpture into NFT.
The money generated from the sales went directly to the former palm oil plantation in Lusanga. “This action creates measurable effects, namely the ability to repurchase land,” Reichert elaborates.
Marten’s project has a greater social impact and value than Hirst’s artwork burning, which although while talking about transformations, fails to deliver the magical qualities we are able to achieve with technology, as shown by Martens.
