.Here’s a very contemporary art-world brain puzzle: An entrepreneur burns his Frida Kahlo drawing in a scheme to sell NFTs. What’s worse: If it’s a total scam, or if it’s totally real?
This is the question you are forced to confront after watching a video now circulating of an event from July 30 of this year where NFT entrepreneur Martin Mobarak did just that. Specifically, Mobarak triumphantly burned what he claimed was a page of Frida Kahlo’s sketchbook containing an artwork called Fantasmones Siniestros. He listed the original work’s value at $10 million, and is claiming that some portion of what he will make from selling NFTs attached to a digital image of the work will go to charity via his venture Fridanft.org.
(Incidentally, Mobarak may have gotten the whole idea from Frida’s own family, who had the vision to sell off a brick from her house as an NFT during Art Basel Miami Beach last year.)
How—or if—Mobarak got hold of the original drawing is unknown. According to Vice News:
“The whole thing is creepy,” said Mary-Anne Martin, one of the top Latin American art dealers in the world, who twice sold the Kahlo drawing in question, once in 2004 to a foundation and again in 2013 to a private collector.
She said she did not sell the drawing to Mobarak and had never heard of him before last week.In any case, if you are looking for something that looks like a parody of every bad idea in crypto of the last year and a half, go watch the FridaNFT launch video. But before you spend two minutes and 49 seconds taking in footage set to presumably rights-free instrumental music, allow me to offer you a frame-by-frame analysis.
Next come shots of a red carpet, an open bar, a D.J., a pool, a tacky Miami mansion. Then there’s Martin Mobarak, wearing a jacket with a sequined Frida Kahlo on the back. “We are going to do an amazing show for everyone who is here and everyone who wants to join us on a livestream on Frida.NFT.org,” he tells the camera.But first, for reasons nowhere explained in the video, we cut to a table full of purses from Colombian designer Mario Hernandez. This is followed by what appears to be a poolside fashion show, where blonde models wearing Hernandez outfits strut, very much not looking like a tribute to Kahlo’s art or life (or fashion, for that matter).
Then there is a speech by Pamela Artigas of the “Association for the Bladder Exstrophy Community,” saying that the FridaNFT money will allow people “the opportunity to have surgeries no matter where they live.” (FWIW, the Association for the Bladder Exstrophy Community does seem to be authentically associated with Mobarak, having tweeted enthusiastically about the art-burning event.) with a Chanel bag follows them on her phone.
As the “Kahlo” image melts into flames, an animated projection behind Mobarak seems to show the image emerging from the fire, subtly symbolizing, as the FridaNFT.org website puts it, how “like a Phoenix rising from its ashes, Art is reborn into Eternity,” as the leaf of Frida’s sketchbook is “permanently transitioned into the Metaverse.”
A final card promises future events for the FridaNFT-holding community. Whether that means more art burning or more pool-side fashion shows is not clear.