During the NFT.NYC event, The Digital Diaspora celebrated some of the most well-known Black digital artists working in the NFT scene.
The fourth annual NFT.NYC conference came to an end, and attendees used the time to reflect on a week of creative inspiration, networking with the community, and developer innovation in the nonfungible token (NFT) area.
The Digital Diaspora event on June 19 functioned as a dedicated exhibition, panel discussion, and fundraiser to highlight the voices and creative abilities of artists of color in the NFT space. It was a follow-up to last year’s well-received debut.
In association with sponsors MetaMask and Samsung, the event was organized by renowned skyscraper photographer DrifterShoots and young up-and-coming artist Diana Sinclair and held on Father’s Day and Juneteenth at the Samsung 837 hub in Manhattan, New York.
Panelists featured Diana Sinclair, Emonee LaRussa, Andre O’Shea, Elise Swopes, Cory Van Lew, and DrifterShoots made a brief on-stage appearance. The event was moderated by MetaMask community manager Faith Love.
One of the most culturally significant days on the American calendar is June 19, also known as Juneteenth, which commemorates the momentous event in 1865 when the final African Americans in Galveston, Texas, were freed from slavery.
The federal holiday of Juneteenth today serves as a sobering reminder to deliberately consider the atrocities of the past, but it’s also a chance to magnify the societal narrative about cultural diversity and representation and to honor the contemporary accomplishments of people of color.
The Digital Diaspora was a celebration of Black culture that sought to “bring awareness to issues of racism and inequality while highlighting the beauty of the art birthed from these ever-present struggles,” according to the website. The term “diaspora” refers to the global migration and displacement of people of similar cultures or origins.
“The Digital Diaspora is an art show that celebrates Black culture and the people who design it, elevating voices that often go unheard and giving a platform to those less seen. By displaying and celebrating the artists chosen and through the charity selected, we push forward to design and build a future that truly welcomes Black art in its truest form.”
Faith Love, Diana Sinclair, Emonee LaRussa, Andre O’Shea, Elise Swopes, and Cory Van Lew are pictured from left to right.
With the help of musician and producer Reuel Williams, Sinclair provided insights into the motivation and history behind a recent piece of work titled “You Can’t Smooth A Crumpled Paper Or A Wrinkled Heart.”
“I created a video collage of this friend of mine [where] she’s breathing and moving. I printed out each frame of the video, crumpled it up with my brother and flattened out each one, so now it’s like a wrinkled piece of paper. Then, I scanned and turned it into a stop motion video, and my mother created a poem to go with it.”
“It was a very intense art piece that took a lot of time to make. This piece was a lot about the process of it, actually, rather than exactly the end artwork,” Sinclair stated before continuing:
Sinclair credited Williams with taking the work to a “whole other level.” The musical score’s cascading tones give the visual vision a structural intensity that complements the story of development in the face of hardship.
“This piece is about persistence and how even though we — meaning Black people in this country — have been wrinkled, have been flattened, have gone through so much struggle, that we still persist, and we still continue. So, it’s a looping video,” said Sinclair.
Leia Sinclair, Sinclair’s mother, wrote a poem to go with the work, which may be read here. The final four lines read: “We lift wrinkled hearts to the sun for healing / While we show beautiful shades / Of smooth unbothered shea butter skin / To the world.”
One of nine works created by Sinclair and Williams together that were on exhibit at the occasion and are currently up for sale. One Decision Away by Andre O’Shea, Bask in the Glow by Elise Swopes, and Yacht Lounge by Cory Van Lew are a few examples.
In his eloquent speech, Andre O’Shea addressed the issue of Black representation in the NFT space. He shared his conviction that progress can be visualized as an infinite symbol in which, after one circle, which represents an artist’s career or creative contribution, ends, the next circle resumes the cycle for the following generation.
“Becoming an artist in the Web3 space, I see how validated we are as digital artists now [because it] gives us this platform. But also, speaking to the new opportunities that it gives us is much kind of like what Diane is doing now — creating more spaces for us, create bigger spaces for us, actually laying down that path.”
In comparison to its predecessor, the Web3 area has a significant advantage in that it can continuously broaden the branches of opportunity and elevate new creators and voices, according to O’Shea.
The founder of the charity initiative Jumpstart Designers and two-time Emmy Award-winning motion graphics designer Emonee LaRussa used her time on the panel to publicly promote her curating of an upcoming event on November 5 in Los Angeles at SuperChief Gallery.
She also discussed the guiding principles of Jumpstart Designers and the manner in which the educational initiative aids in the development of digital skills on Adobe Creative Cloud and access to necessary computing hardware for young artists from marginalized communities.
“This has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. I didn’t grow up with a whole lot of money, and being in digital art, I had realized that […] me experiencing not having access really made me realize how reliant my dreams were on money.”
“And so, I wanted to change the future of digital art. So that is our motto: change the future of digital art. Because we really believe that by bringing these kids on, you’ll see new experiences, new stories that you’ve never seen before, and they won’t be limited to what they can create.”
As part of the Voice NFT Residency in 2021, 25-year-old LaRussa guided six up-and-coming artists to produce and auction their own NFT artworks. To date, $38,742 in donations have been made to low-income kids who want to improve their digital literacy and animation abilities.
“We all know, digital art is very expensive. And how many kids out there are just so talented, so creative and don’t even have the opportunity? NFTs have changed our life and how many opportunities NFTs brings for us, they’re just not even in question for that. And so, we want to change that.”
DrifterShoots, often known as Drift, was invited onto the platform and expressed his appreciation for the roughly 1,000 persons who were physically present.
“This means the world to us,” he stated. “You know, the space can be a lot of smoke and mirrors at times — people playing with ‘pretend money’ and things like that. But I think at the end of the day as artists, especially as Black artists, with purposes and real intentions, we want our art, our lives, our stories to make a clear impact in the world.”
