Sharjah’s House of Wisdom to host first NFT art exhibition on the metaverse

More than 60 international artists and 15 from the UAE will participate in the event, the first of its kind in the emirate

Sharjah cultural hub House of Wisdom will host its first non-fungible token or NFT art exhibition from March 1 to April 15. Called Gateway to the Metaverse, the event will feature 60 international artists as well as 15 UAE artists, and will cover several themes.

House of Wisdom’s Al Khawarizmi Exhibition area will host the physical version of the event across 24 screens that will showcase digital art, crypto art, musical renditions and performance. Artists will be represented in two rotational rounds, the first featuring more than 30 international artists, followed by a second round covering roughly the same number of artists.

A two-day seminar, held alongside the exhibition, will delve into creative new technologies in the art world and introduce visitors to the emerging channels for artistic expressions and contemporary practices. A workshop will also be held to guide artists and visitors on how to transform their talents into NFT works.

Stefano Favaretto, co-founder of Global Art Exhibition, a multidisciplinary global project connecting talents, will curate the exhibition, along with the Morrow collective, an NFT curatorial platform in the UAE.

In January, the Morrow collective helped Dubai Culture host its first NFT art exhibition, featuring 50 works made by artists in the UAE.

Titled 50/50 to mark the UAE’s Golden Jubilee, the exhibition at Al Safa Art & Design Library included the creations of artists Khalid Al Banna, Alia Al Gaoud, Dalal Ahmed, Marwan Shakarchi and Gigi Gorlova. The artists were chosen via an open call and the NFTs featured ranged from digital drawings and paintings to 3D works, animation, collages and photography.

Scroll through the gallery below to see photos of Sharjah’s House of Wisdom:

NFTs burst on to the art scene in early 2021 when artist Beeple sold his first NFT artwork at a Christie’s auction for $69.4 million. An NFT refers to a digital asset, tied to the blockchain, that functions as a certification of ownership. NFTs can take on many forms, and art is only one of them, though all types of digital files can be “minted” as NFTs.

According to a report by The Guardian newspaper in the UK, collectors and traders spent $22 billion on NFTs in 2021.