It is a remarkable twist that the first major gallery in the world to host a crypto-art exhibition is in a country where the artists are forbidden from supporting themselves through the proceeds.
Virtual Niche: Have You Ever Seen Memes in the Mirror? opened in late March at Beijing’s UCCA Lab. An exhibition of NFT art, it is curated by BlockCreateArt (BCA), China’s first platform for exchanging art through NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. These are works in digital form that are entered into a digital ledger with additional details such as ownership. The medium gives digital artists, whose work can be infinitely copied, another way to monetise their art.
BCA and most other NFT art exchanges accept cryptocurrencies such as ether or bitcoin in exchange for digital pieces sold by artists. Many of these artists will eventually exchange their cryptocurrencies for government-issued currencies, such as dollars. But in China, a combination of capital controls and internet blocks means that nobody is allowed to exchange cryptocurrencies for renminbi.