NFTs at the Venice Art Biennale

As NFTs continue to infiltrate industries and economies, their position within the art field remains debatable. While some believe Non-Fungible Tokens are the modern renaissance in art, others argue the negatives - such as unreasonable amounts of greenhouse emissions - outweigh the positives.

This year, the heated debate has entered the heart of the art world, the Venice Art Biennale. The exhibition takes place at the Decentral Art Pavilion and marks an important milestone for NFT artists. The pavilion aims to educate and engage audiences ranging from professionals to collectors, to those curious about NFTs at large. It opens a dialogue between the casual art fan and the NFT artists, giving a chance to discuss the importance and the possible future of digitizing culture.

“We are experiencing an unprecedented artistic evolution where contemporary art expands in the blink of an eye. This expansion requires a dialogue with traditional mechanisms so that all digital or analog artistic variants can coexist in the future where the blockchain will be part of our daily lives,” says Javier Krasuk, one of the organizers and curators of the Decentral Art Pavilion.

Decentral Art Pavilion raises interesting questions - how does traditional art feel about NFTs? What are the limits and inherent vices of its often exaggerated inclusivity and diversity? How can we make crypto art more sustainable? We felt these questions were urgent and relevant to us as a design studio and to our clients, as we all are inevitably influenced by blockchain technologies.

If you’re curious about crypto- and NFT-related projects, check out our design project for Ryder. If you’re interested in some further reading, look through our recommended reading: Toward a New Ecology of Crypto Art and A Guide to Eco-friendly CryptoArt.