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Indonesia welcomes NFTs: Southeast Asia’s first physical NFT art gallery opens in Bali
Within months in the art world and beyond, NFTs went from an obscure acronym to a 24/7 obsession. Now they are taking over Bali.
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Sneak a peek: Superlative Gallery. (Courtesy of Superlative Secret Society) (Personal Collection/Courtesy of Superlative Secret Society)
W
ithin months in the art world and beyond, NFTs went from an obscure acronym to a 24/7 obsession. Now they are taking over Bali.
The historical March 2021 sale of a Beeple artwork for US$69 million set speculators ablaze, rushing to purchase this new genre of digitally encrypted assets. The market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), assets tokenized on the blockchain to verify authenticity, is booming yet is an unregulated sphere in the wild west of decentralized finance (DeFi).
Digital designers, creatives and conventional artists are targeting the NFT space. Artists are especially attracted by opportunities to monetize their work outside of the exploitative conventional art world and embracing the 21st-century digital creative economy. Minting, sales platforms and online communities, consequently, have quickly evolved. However, physical infrastructure, a seeming misnomer and adverse to the digital realm requires distinct visions and strategic planning. Unfortunately, until recently, it has remained non-existent.
Southeast Asia's first physical NFT art gallery has opened in Bali. Superlative Gallery, an extensive exhibition and community space in Legian displaying NFT art on large screens opened on Jan. 11. The gallery is one aspect of the supportive infrastructure to develop the Superlative Secret Society (SSS), a community of NFT art enthusiasts and collectors.
The opening was highlighted by a teaser of REPUS, the second series of its NFT art collections, and six days of public discussions. From Jan. 11 to 16, SSS took over Times Square in NYC, with Superlative ads pulsating across big screens to the global audience once every 30 minutes.
Four young Javanese visionaries, Prasetyo Budiman, Arief Wijaksana, Adam Adha and Faatih Rifqi Muqaffi dream of empowering Indonesian creative communities and occupy the SSS hot seat. The SSS road map is a tactical plan to expand their reach in the real world on a global scale and virtually across the Metaverse and NFT space.
