Indonesia’s mania for nonfungible tokens (NFTs) might have subsided, nearly 12 months after NFT phenom Ghozali sold his NFT Ghozali Everyday for Rp 3.1 trillion (US$216 million) last January. The NFT hype, which caught on among the rich and famous, among them Madonna and tennis legend Serena Williams, as well as Indonesian celebrity Luna Maya, among others, has since run into choppy waters. The causes include declining faith in blockchains, the FTX market crash, downward trends in the cryptocurrency market and the global economic crisis. The accumulating effects of these crises have seen NFT prices go down by 70 to 90 percent from around 90 ETH in 2021 (about US$288,000 at the time) to 30 ETH today (about $33,000).

Yet a number of Indonesian NFT movers continue to defy these bad omens and rocky trends. We take a look at five such artists who move in the twilight zone between art, finance and the digital landscape.

Karafuru

Known as the largest NFT initiative in Indonesia, Karafuru’s transactions totaled Rp 1 trillion ($64,246,700) as of August 2022, the Global Investa Capital (GIC) P2P trading foreign exchange platform noted on its website gicindonesia.com. 

Founded in January 2022 by NFT mover Grady Edbert as a partnership between the Urban Sneaker Society, Toy Museum and Indonesian illustrator WD Willy, Karafuru started off with only 12 characters. Since then, Karafuru has become a hub for 5,555 generative works of art sold on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. OpenSea noted that the initiative featured many anime characters, like Shirai, Futo, Ku’roi and Kiba. Equally playful and grotesque, the characters are viable digital assets that were bought and sold by art enthusiasts and communities in Indonesia and around the world.

Karafuru attributes its success to the use of the USS Feed digital platform to disseminate art to the public of all ages and walks of life in Indonesia and around the world, as well as the Karnival Karafuru event at the Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) culinary hub, which took place from March to April.   

Diela Maharanie

Illustration and digital art are nothing new to Indonesian artist Diela Maharanie, as she has been making her mark in the medium since 2005 on digital outlets like Facebook and the DeviantArt art website. But the UIN alumnus has come into her own since she discovered NFTs in 2021, with her lively, brightly colored, psychedelic illustrations. Diela raised her profile in Indonesia and overseas through exhibitions like ArtMoments Jakarta, as well as Singapore, London, Miami and New York City.

Since then, she has sold her NFT tokens to more than 400 regular customers. Diela also raised her profile through collaborations with Adidas, Apple, Instagram and WhatsApp as well as other companies. Diela is also one of the founders of Metarupa, an Indonesian art community that claims to be the first to venture into the metaverse. 

Keeping NFTs viable by threes: Tommy Chandra, Arya Mularama and Diela Maharanie before Dial’s NFT piece “The end is the beginning: controlled chaos” at the ArtMoments Jakarta exhibition on Nov. 4. (JP/Tunggul Wirajuda) (JP/Tunggul Wirajuda)

Arya Mularama

Tommy’s fellow creator Arya Mularama is in many ways the quintessential NFT artist, as reflected by the surreal colors of his works like Encounter, which was shown at the ArtMoments Jakarta exhibition in November, as well as Galan’s Hunger and Time to Go Home. The vibrant, psychedelic hues of the Tezos blockchain stalwart perhaps reflect his consistently upbeat take on the NFT field. The University of Indonesia alumnus in communications based the premise on his assertion that “Indonesia has the largest in Southeast Asia”, as reflected by his work on the grand launch of the Sarinah department store and collaboration with Twilo Studio.

While the darker hues of Arya’s work might reflect his awareness of the risks that come from innovations like NFTs, he still sees opportunities in the current downturn of the cryptocurrency-based NFT market. These include encouraging new NFT artists to enter the scene due to its currently low rates, as well as constantly creating new NFT designs.

Tommy Chandra

Tommy Chandra’s sharp, concise NFT artwork largely eschewes the anime aesthetic and bright colors of Diela Maharanie, Arya Mularama and his other counterparts. Instead, the Gadjah Mada University alumnus’ science-fiction inspired works like Meteor Eater, Planet Invader and Star Collector draw on both cutting-edge and traditional techniques and are inspired by pop culture, his architectural background and daily life.

Highlighted during the 2022 Singapore Art Week exhibition, they seem to provide a blueprint for whimsy, as does his work Life, which was showcased at ArtMoments Jakarta. Tommy’s design collaborations with businesses like Google Indonesia and the dia.lo.gue artspace and art gallery also made him a fixture in the public sphere.

Pop art precision: Tommy Chandra’s “Meteor Eater” is a homage to science-fiction as well as a precise study in blueprints. (Courtesy of Tommy Chandra) (Courtesy of Tommy Chandra/.)

Faza Meonk

Aficionados of NFTs and anime might be familiar with the sight of Si Juki, a seemingly mischievous teenager whose irreverent character is reflected by his grotesquely crossed eyes and buck teeth. But they might know little of Faza Ibnu Ubaidillah Salman, or Faza Meonk, the man who created Juki in 2021. While Juki was first known to Indonesian comic buffs through digital comics, he was known to the wider public through Lost in Jukiverse, an NFT collection of the character that was exhibited in Sarinah last June.

Faza released a limited edition of 3456 NFTs for Lost in Jukiverse to comic and NFT fans alike. But his release of the character through NFTs won him international acclaim, with buyers from China, India, France and the United States, as well as other countries, expressing interest in buying Juki’s NFTs. The 30-year-old also has sound advice for NFT newcomers in the field’s currently bearish market, namely to enter NFT communities to get a better idea of which projects might be lucrative.