Artadia hosted a panel discussion with industry experts and artists on the ever-present topic of NFTs. Panelists discussed the opportunity for equity within decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), the value of unique versus preexisting work as NFTs, and the environmental impact of blockchain technology.
The dynamic assembly of panelists included Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle, Global Director of Online Sales and Head of Pace Verso, Amir H. Fallah, Artist and 2020 Los Angeles Artadia Awardee, Sarah Friend, Artist and Software Developer, Christopher Y. Lew, Chief Artistic Director of Horizon Art Foundation and Outland Art, and Nato Thompson, Co-Founder Artwrld, Founder and Director The Alternative Art School.
Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle is a curator and art dealer based in New York City. Christiana holds the title of Global Director of Online Sales at Pace Gallery—spearheading and directing visions behind all ventures falling under the gallery’s digital helm. Christiana has contributed to Pace’s programming with the recent curation of a group exhibition titled, Convergent Evolutions: The Conscious of Body Work currently on view at Pace’s 510 W 25th St location through October 23rd. This is Christiana’s second curatorial debut this year, the first being a group exhibition titled Black Femme: Sovereign of WAP and the Virtual Realm. The exhibition supported a deconstructive discourse around femininity, sexuality, and gender politics through a post-internet lens.
Amir H. Fallah received his BFA in Fine Art & Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA in painting at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Selected solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings SD; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland OR; San Diego ICA; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland KS.
Sarah Friend is an artist and software developer, specializing in blockchain, games, and the p2p web. Her work critically examines technology and interfaces, in both content and form, considering system-building as a narrative impulse. She is a participant in the Berlin Program for Artists, a co-curator of Ender Gallery, an artist residency taking place inside the game Minecraft, an alumni of Recurse Centre, a retreat for programmers, and an organiser of Our Networks, a conference on all aspects of the distributed web. Recent exhibitions include Contingent Systems, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary; Proof of Stake, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg; Breadcrumbs, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne; Proof of Art, Oökultur, Linz; Salon Solaire, suns.works, Zurich; Panarchist’s Dinner, Floating University, Berlin (2021).
Christopher Y. Lew is Chief Artistic Director at Horizon Art Foundation and Outland Art. He has over fifteen years of experience working at American museums and arts nonprofits. He is a former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art where he oversaw the emerging artist program and was co-curator of the 2017 Whitney Biennial. At the Whitney, he was co-curator of Salman Toor: How Will I Know (2020) and also organized Pope.L: Choir (2019), Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape (2018), and mounted the first US solo exhibitions for Sophia Al-Maria, Rachel Rose, and Jared Madere. Prior to joining the Whitney, he was assistant curator at MoMA PS1 and organized numerous exhibitions there including solo shows with Nancy Grossman, Clifford Owens, GCC, and Gavin Kenyon, as well as the group exhibitions New Pictures of Common Objects (2012–2013) and Tastemakers Choice (2014). Lew has contributed to several publications including Art AsiaPacific, Art Journal, Bomb, Huffington Post, and Mousse.
Nato Thompson is an author, curator, and what he describes as “cultural infrastructure builder”. He currently is the founder and director of The Alternative Art School as well as co-founder and Artistic Director at artwrld, a NFT commissioning and presenting platform. He has worked as Artistic Director at Philadelphia Contemporary, Creative Time, and MASS MoCA. Thompson organized major Creative Time projects including The Creative Time Summit, Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety”, Trevor Paglen’s “The Last Pictures”, and Paul Ramírez Jonas’s “Key to the City”, among many others. He has written two books of cultural criticism.