This Russian Armenian artist might just be taking the statement “Art is Life” too literally. Narine Arakelian, a 42-year-old artist is auctioning her first NFT at the annual art event, the Art Basel Miami.
Arakelian is upping the perks of buying her painting called “Love, Hope, Live” by including an embedded contract promising one of her eggs to the buyer; talk about a real value proposition.
Arakelian hopes that the person who buys the NFT will conceive a child from her egg, adding that she wants it to be bought by a couple who have had trouble conceiving as this gives it more chance of being utilized for conception.
“I am so happy to bring a child into the world through my artwork,” Arakelian told online magazine, PageSix. The painter who is a mother of a 21-year-old son continued, “It’s a beautiful act of creativity to give the gift of art and life.”
“My artworks are all my children and the fact this one will actually produce a child is wonderful,” she proclaimed. “The art will always mean so much to the buyer because it brought them their child! It will always carry that special memory.”
Arakelian also highlighted that “the child will be a child once they are born, not a piece of art.”
The European painter is no news to controversial art pieces. Her previous work includes transforming the iconic 15th-century spiral staircase of the Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo in Venice into an astonishing multi-coloured lighthouse at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
She then put on a performance, in which she passed through the exhibition rooms and removed elements of her costume till she was left naked.
She combines visual and performing arts, utilizing new digital technology with a focus on social, cultural and political issues such as gender identity and women empowerment.
Shockingly, Arakelian’s eggs were not the only “living” thing on display at Art Basel as an NFT. Another artist infused the authentic signature of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry into the DNA of a living bacterial organism and put it on display at the event.
The creators called it the “first living, eco” NFT, as the art-infused bacteria was “created and stored on organic material” and “promises a net-zero” potentially “carbon negative environmental categorization,” according to its creators.
On top of the bacterial cell originally implanted with the signature, the bacteria is living, meaning the cell can “double at a rate that will create over a billion copies” of the NFT, they continued.
NFTs are the biggest thing in crypto currently. From land in the metaverse to digital art selling for millions of dollars. Everybody wants a piece of the pie and the boundaries of what can be created are being pushed.
As more people pay attention to the trend and keep collecting, we can only expect artists to keep reinventing and producing more unconventional pieces.
