When she was a teenager, Diana Sinclair drew and created digital characters through a social app called Draw Something. On the app, there were "communities of teens," she says. They came together by commenting under each other's illustrations and sharing their work.
"People would role-play or have long conversations in the comments," Sinclair recalls. "It was like a fever dream." Some asked to trade characters with each other, sometimes even paying for the privilege through their parents' PayPal account. But one day the app announced it was closing, and the artist communities that had formed there began asking desperate questions, "Should we save our artwork? Where should we go now?"
This article is part of Road to Consensus, a series that features speakers and the big ideas they will be discussing at Consensus 2022, CoinDesk's festival of the year, June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. Learn more.
They eventually switched to another drawing app, but Sinclair hadn't bothered to save their artwork from the original app. Now that she's looking into non-fungible tokens (NFT), she sees how the technology could have saved these now-lost drawings from disappearing into the ether.
"Digital ownership is super important," she says. "Our worlds are becoming more virtual ... A record of what you're doing online [and the ability to] look back in a few years ... that's going to mean a lot historically."
Sinclair, a visual artist whose media include photography, video, and digital and hand drawings, began exploring NFTs last February. Her partner at the time was making 3D digital art, but there was no market or exhibition venue for this type of work. "The [NFT] space was a real hit, especially in this community," says Sinclair, sitting in her New Jersey room surrounded by art supplies as sunlight streams through the windows behind her as we talk about Zoom.
Sinclair counts herself among the first photographers and video artists to enter the NFT field before the big photography boom in the summer of 2021. To date, she has directed The Digital Diaspora, an art exhibition that debuted around Juneteenth [June 19] 2021 and consisted of work by black NFT artists that was featured on Link screens throughout New York City, and she collaborated with Houston's estate to create a video project featuring a previously unreleased demo track by Whitney Houston that sold for more than $1 million in December. In July, Fortune named her one of the 50 most influential people in NFT, and TIME featured her as an artist in the magazine's first NFT collection.
Even when it comes to digital identity, our bodies aren't going away. And the struggles that come with our bodies won't go away.Sinclair's very first NFT was sold in April 2021. The photo was part of a series titled "I Am the Black Gold of the Sun" (named after a song Sinclair's mother introduced her to) that she had taken the previous August - one of the first photo shoots she had ever done. The photo, with the same title as the series, shows a young black man standing in water about three feet deep, with a translucent yellow fabric covering his head, his figure highlighted by the sun, and it's about "coming into yourself and coming into your light, despite oppression and despite pain," Sinclair says.
"For me, at that point, selling wasn't that important," Sinclair says. Rather, what was exciting about the NFT was being part of a community. It reminded her of the kind of interactions she had at Draw Something. "It was the first time since my digital art app days that I was in a community of artists who were constantly talking. There was a lot of joy and excitement," she says. "It was really cool."
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Sinclair soon immersed herself in a community of artists selling their work as NFTs, and then in the broader NFT community on Twitter. She began using her platform to curate NFT work by artists she admired via Twitter threads, "about 15 or more pieces of art in each thread," she says. "Those are some black artists in that space that you should definitely check out," like Serwah Attafuah, LUZ and Blacksneakers.
People began to take an interest in Sinclair's curated Twitter threads, and the works she presented soon sold out. This gave her the idea: "We need to curate and shine the spotlight on artists in a bigger way."
This led Sinclair to curate what was then her most ambitious NFT project, "The Digital Diaspora." Coinciding with Juneteenth, the U.S. holiday (beginning in 2021) that commemorates the day African American slaves in Texas were informed of their freedom in 1865, the project showcased the work of black artists from six countries. The project aimed primarily to increase their visibility in the emerging Web 3 world, which reflects real-world biases that marginalize black artists.
Sinclair worked with the NFT marketplace Foundation and Towards Utopia, a nonprofit organization that promotes "black creativity," to auction off the works of "The Digital Diaspora." The auction helped raise funds for G.L.I.T.S. (Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society), which provides medical care and housing to transgender sex workers and others who identify as LGBTQIA or BIPOC in the New York City region. Digital Diaspora artists' works hung throughout New York City for about two weeks.
It was a "great moment," Sinclair says, but it also revealed an aspect of the NFT space that made her feel "stuck at the time."
"It was a little too soon," she says. "I don't think people were ready at the time to hear that message and realize that inequality was possible in this new world that was developing."
This describes the kind of blind utopian ethos often found in Web 3, especially among those who enthusiastically believe that a decentralized Internet (populated by anonymous avatars that hide users' identities) will equalize the hierarchies that exist in the physical world. The use of avatars like Bored Ape or CryptoPunk means that Web 3 participants don't have to reveal their skin color or gender, and that leads to the frankly erroneous notion that those identities don't matter in this digital world.
"A lot of people say, 'We're in the metaverse, there's no identity, no skin color, no race, no gender identity,'" Sinclair says. "That's not true." It's even less true when many people who participate in Web 3 communities online seek out the real-life experiences that come with them - the in-person meetings, the parties like Ape Fest and the conferences with their many networking opportunities. People still want to find others they can relate to, who share their interests and experiences. "Even when it comes to digital identity, our bodies aren't going away," Sinclair says. "And the struggles associated with our bodies won't go away.
But when everyone is an anonymous penguin, doodle or witch, it's harder to connect with the people who share your problems, and sharing your problems is one of the best ways to work through and even overcome them. "You can't just say, 'I can identify with the struggles of black artists, so I'm joining a community with black artists,'" she says.
Sinclair is currently working on a project that connects the dots between the extremely online NFT world and the physical spaces where participants gather. She started it at the South by Southwest festival in March, where she set up a portable photo studio to take Polaroid portraits of members of the NFT community who attended the event in Austin, Texas.
"It's about documenting physical identity as opposed to digital identity," Sinclair says. The tangible Polaroids felt like a fitting way to embody the physical aspect of the project, which she plans to gradually flesh out as she takes more photos at various Web 3 events, including the upcoming Consensus conference, also in Austin. Through the project, she has already met a variety of NFT enthusiasts in person and has been pleasantly surprised by the diversity of their interests in the field.
"In some ways, I'm a little overwhelmed with all the different opinions on Twitter, so it was nice to sit down with everyone and get their individual thoughts on why they were at this event," she says. She met a 12-year-old girl, a "badass bitch" who collects NFTs, and a founder of Sound.xyz, a platform where music artists can sell their sounds as NFTs. "We had a great conversation about black culture and music culture and how to bring that into the space," she says.
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Despite the importance Sinclair places on identity, she took advantage of Web 3's anonymity early in her fledgling NFT career. Sinclair is 18 years old, 17 when she started in the field, and she didn't want others to immediately judge her based on her age. "I really wanted to see people accept me and my art for who I am, how I think and how I work," she says. "I didn't want to feel like I was leaning on the crutch of 'Oh, she's so young' .... ' and that that becomes the only narrative of my work."
Sinclair's youth, however, has helped give her perhaps her most sensational work to date. In September, entertainment-focused NFT platform OneOf contacted Sinclair and told her she was working with Whitney Houston's family on an art project - a video for a song Houston recorded at age 17 that had not been released until now. Houston's family was looking for the right artist for the job, and when Houston's sister-in-law met Sinclair, she "fell in love" with her and her work.
She also noticed similarities between Sinclair and Houston, except for the age at which they would collaborate on the work over time. Both valued family, community and warmth. Houston's family spoke of how intelligent and caring the singer was before she passed away in 2012.... I didn't want to
feel like I was leaning on the crutch of "Oh, she's so young..." And that this would become the only narrative of my work.Although Sinclair had heard Houston's music before, she hadn't grown up with it as older generations may have. So she was able to take the time to get to know Houston as an artist, rather than as the icon she became during her lifetime. "It was nice to take a step back and look at Whitney herself from that perspective, rather than just icon status," she says. "You can lose the humanity of people a little bit when you look at them through that lens."
Ultimately, youth played a big role in Sinclair's project with the Houston estate. The family wanted Sinclair's young age to help keep Whitney's work current. "I kept saying, 'Nobody needs me to keep Whitney Houston relevant,'" she says. "They just wanted her to stay modern."
Sinclair's work in the NFTs certainly met that modern criterion, and the way she executed the project embraced that youthful energy. She hired only young people-teens and young adults-to work on the set, from stylists to models. The set, she describes, was overflowing with "beautiful black energy," and she was able to pay everyone the required fee.
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It's not easy to have that much clout at such a young age (or any age, really), and it got to Sinclair. "I felt this massive pressure that black people are falling behind in this field because there's so much money floating around," she says. "We're already so far behind in the American financial structure, which was literally created to oppress black people.
While she feels obligated to educate people about black artists and the importance of highlighting their work on Web 3 to get it through the barely open doors, it takes a lot of work. And Sinclair has grown tired.
"Being so young and having all the pressure of getting a lot of people on board - I really wanted to do this, and it's still so important to me," she says. "Last fall and winter, I realized my mental health was really suffering.
For all the talk, the magic of Web 3 won't automatically erase power structures that have been in place for centuries or more. More and more "Web 2 brands" (Nikes, Adidas, and numerous fashion brands have jumped on the bandwagon) that bring their money and influence from Web 2 are creating enticing opportunities for artists and builders operating on Web 3. These brands then "turn away from the original ethos" of Web 3, Sinclair says, and pursue traditional capitalist goals. "But I think people need to take a step back and realize what it means to give these brands and companies power in this space.
Still, she says there is hope for Web3, pointing to upheavals that have already taken place in the traditional art market - such as artists learning about the perpetual royalty structure included in most NFT sales contracts and asking their galleries for perpetual royalties as well. This practice is essentially unprecedented in the established art world, and most artists would never have thought of asking for it before NFTs. "But the thing is, without the blockchain, it's much harder to track this," Sinclair says.
In addition to their usefulness in tracking royalties, blockchains also provide a sense of permanence for digital art. While the works Sinclair created with drawing apps as a teenager disappeared with those apps, her blockchain-based works have a long life ahead of them. And she takes this digital proof of ownership seriously, having bought back one of her very first works, the cover image from her "I Am the Black Gold of the Sun" series.
"When I was younger, I was very hard on myself, so I didn't save any of my artwork," Sinclair says of her days as a drawing app. Today, she's proud of her work and has access to technology that allows her to preserve and display it forever.