The musician and visual artist has auctioned off her very first NFT.
Last week, we revealed that M.I.A. had ventured into the NFT marketplace to mint a trio of one-off digital artworks. The individual artworks, dubbed KALA COYN, GIFTY 1 and GIFTY 2, formed a wider NFT series called NFT GARAGE DANCE.
KALA COYN was first to go up for auction via cryptocurrency art platform Foundation. The auction finished on Friday (9 April), with a winning bid of 25 ETH, which was around $52,000 at point of sale. It now equates to roughly $54,638 at time of writing.
Thanks for everyone who took part in my first experience in this space. 25 years in the making as visual artist. Keeping it hot keeping it tangy. 🙏🏾💫 https://t.co/s3ROkTqDsR
— M.I.A (@MIAuniverse) April 9, 2021
Speaking on KALA COYN NFT in a recent interview with Foundation, M.I.A. described the digital art piece as “psychedelic, utopian work.”
“I just want to feed your eyeballs when you look at it, but it’s not meant to be shocking. It’s like when you eat in a Tamil restaurant and everything is so spicy and super intense—that’s the vibe I wanted to bring into the work. You know what I mean?” she added. “I always need that sort of stimulation and that’s what I want to share with people right now. A lot of people are bored and all of the aesthetics on the internet are starting to look similar, so I want to break it up.
Artists such as Aphex Twin and Grimes have minted NFTs in recent months. Meanwhile, musicians like Nils Frahm have shared their thoughts on the digital art trend. In a recent interview with The Independent, Frahm said, “Some of my heroes like Aphex Twin are selling, sorry, crap for 130,000 bucks… It’s unforgivable to participate in something which is so bleak and wrong.”
Revisit M.I.A.’s cover story.
