This curated sale is the first art auction in Japan to make use of NFTs (Non-Fungible Token). NFTs are a new technology that links digital files with meta-information (similar to a certificate of authenticity, a certificate of ownership or an artist’s signature) to create unique, irreplaceable virtual tokens. Their unrivaled appeal is the combination of the characteristics of analog objects with the properties of digital goods. The advent of this new technology has caused a revolution in the traditional art market, and several NFT art auction houses have already been held in Europe and in the United States.

Now, I specialize in cultural studies and have focused my research on social practice in contemporary art, a medium also known as socially engaged art (SEA). In short, I am neither an expert on NFTs nor particularly familiar with the recent goings-on of the art market. But during my research on NFTs and their relationship with art following my engagement as the curator of this sale, I realized that looking at NFTs through the lens of contemporary art history actually helps reveal aspects of the technology that are often overlooked.

One tends to associate NFTs with genres of art that themselves incorporate digital technologies. And indeed, in many cases this is a perfectly fitting impression. For example, artists like Lu Yang or Kazuki Takakura, both of whom participating in this curated sale, have been garnering the art world’s attention as leaders in their fields of digital art and media art. But one theme of our sale is the introduction of an art-historical perspective to look at the potential and the significance of NFTs for contemporary art with a broader perspective.

Let us take a look, for example, at the movement of conceptual art that enjoyed popular throughout the world in the 1960s, especially in Europe and in the USA. The genre refers to art whose core components were thoughts and concepts, and which emphasized ideas (e.g., questions to be raised, topics to be addressed) over materiality (such as color, form, material and so on). The meeting of the art world with the technology of the NFT, which is primarily used for videos, images and other data on the web (i.e., without involving “physical” artworks ), will require us to rethink our understanding of concepts like ownership and value. And this kind of recalibration and redefinition of existing concepts is precisely the challenge that conceptual artists have aimed for. Today artists like UuDam Tran Nguyen or David Oreilly, who both contribute to this sale, make full use of the powers of various digital technologies to create conceptual works that question our normative notions.

In recent years, feminism’s importance in the history of contemporary art has been reevaluated. Certainly, the impact of feminist ideas, artists and movements on social practice (SEA) in contemporary art has been severely underestimated in the standard postwar art-historical narrative. In this context, the feminist aspects in the practice of current artists like Sputniko!, Yu-KI YUKI and Serwah Attafuah are deserving of further attention. Attafuah, whose art takes inspiration from her identity as a black woman, or Yu-KI YUKI, who engages gender diversity and LGBTQ-related themes in her works, give us an idea of the inspirational power of new feminist developments such as Black Feminism and Queer Studies. Embodied within the three artists’ diverse, feminism-rooted creative practice is the idea of intersectionality, which examines the interconnections between race, class, gender and other identities and has become one of the most important keywords in recent contemporary art.

Allow me to finish this text by borrowing a quote from Kenny Schachter, one of the few people who have explored the connections between art and NFTs from both theoretical as well as practical perspectives:
“The art world isn’t keen on willfully adapting to change, especially when the upheaval entails a shift in the landscape of access and gatekeepers that control it.”
It is my hope that this curated sale, titled “NFTs in the History of Contemporary Art”, will firmly establish NFTs within the continuing history of contemporary art and help us willfully adapt to the ensuing positive changes.