Tatler speaks to local pioneers, Colin Goltra and Gabby Dizon of Narra Art Gallery, who are introducing crypto art at Art Fair Philippines this week. We dig deeper into what this NFT craze is all about
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) collectors and close friends Gabby Dizon and Colin Goltra launched Narra Art Gallery in late January 2021 to provide an open gallery space where they can showcase digital art available in the crypto art community. The gallery features five different floors that serve as exhibit spaces accessible in the open-world virtual realm or Metaverse. Easily accessible via web browser on a computer, it is located at the heart of Decentraland’s 100xArt District neighbourhood.
It is also named after the national tree of the Philippines. Narra Art Gallery aims to open the doors to the crypto art scene in the Philippines and showcase incredible local talents across the country, and possibly from abroad.
Being collectors themselves for a while now, Dizon and Goltra initially founded Narra Art Gallery simply to display their personal crypto art acquisitions publicly. (Decentraland is designed to provide people with the means to buy plots of land in the virtual realm and actively build something on it, much like in MMORPGs that we play). But the co-founders of Narra Gallery saw a big potential for it to grow more, especially now with the recent rise of digital art galleries like theirs and the sudden digitalisation of many traditional art galleries and museums due to the unprecedented repercussions of the global pandemic.
Displaying crypto art, collectibles, NFTs, and other virtual reality projects, Narra Art Gallery has been tapped by the Art Fair Philippines this month to play a huge part in this year’s edition. With an online talk with Dizon and Goltra as guests to help people understand the crypto basics and how to buy an NFT, as well as a meeting of artists and gallerists that are also active in the crypto art community, the NFT 101 Showcase plays a huge part in this year’s Art Fair PH.
So what exactly is this new technology that is sweeping the local and international art community by storm?