For most participants, this is their first exposure to the exciting new world of NFTs
Auctions via OpenSea for the historic collection will take place over April and will see artworks from prominent African artists across a range of artistic mediums sold to buyers who have the right (but not the obligation) to take delivery of the physical artwork, and resell via an NFT marketplace.
Although the NFT market seems to be cooling, it is still one of the best ways for artists to more easily reach a global audience, while improved transparency offers massive benefits to both collectors and artists, helping to foster a vibrant global artistic community.
Adding a digital component to the Out of Africa collection opens up a new realm for artistic exploration, and this has been embraced by artists in the collection, many of which have added animation to the NFT representations of their physical artworks.
The collection includes works from 43 established artists alongside exciting new talent and reflects the diversity of the medium.
By having dual existence on the blockchain and in the real world, artists can have their work easily displayed in the number of metaverse environments that continue to spring up.
Artworks range from leatherwork by young Abongile Sidzumo and whimsical and vibrant Olivié Keck works (Olivié was recently featured by CNN and has long experimented with combining digital animation with physical artworks), to the celebrated political commentary of Blessing Ngobeni’s mixed media art.
These will be auctioned off in batches starting April. All that is needed to place bids is a free Ethereum wallet, like MetaMask and the digital currency Ethereum. A helpful guide for getting setup with both can be found on the project’s website.
You can view the collection in detail on OpenSea and effort has been made to ensure the production of professional scans or photographs of each artwork for the NFT version, letting you see every brushstroke and minute detail (to zoom in on an artwork, find it on OpenSea, expand it by clicking on the image, right click and open the image in a new tab).
There is also a Poster NFT collection where 10 percent of the revenue is used to buy and destroy items to make it a purely digital NFT.
