Artists in Cuba are blocked from NFT trading sites

HAVANA — When everything seemed to be going wrong, Cuban multimedia artist Alejandro Pablo García Alarcón found a solution in what some might consider an unusual place: NFTs.

Artists like him have been dealt several blows in recent years: The pandemic wreaked havoc on Cuba’s tourism sector, sending art sales plummeting. US sanctions, although not explicitly aimed at art, made it more difficult for Cubans to sell their works. And for artists whose work can cross over into political commentary, like García Alarcón’s, it can be difficult to be featured in Cuban galleries.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital images recorded on a blockchain and usually purchased with cryptocurrencies. They offer artists like García Alarcón a rare loophole because they can profit from their art on an international stage with few speech restrictions due to the decentralized nature of the medium.

“The first thing that drew me to it was the freedom,” said García Alarcón, best known by his stage name, Paolo De. “You can commercialize your work without intermediaries, without having to pass through a filter.”

But this year the doors have begun to close for artists from Cuba and other countries facing US sanctions as key NFT trading sites have gradually blocked them from doing business on their platforms, often with little or no explanation.

García Alarcón is among at least 30 Cuban artists whose profiles have been removed from at least two US-owned NFT trading sites, including the largest, OpenSea and KnownOrigin, according to Cuban NFT artist collectives.

Neither side responded to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The delistings have extended to some of the biggest names in the Cuban digital art scene, including Havana’s most popular interactive art space, Fábrica de Arte Cubano, and photographer Gabriel Guerra Bianchini, the first Cuban resident to auction off a piece as an NFT.

In March 2021, his work “Hotel Habana 3/10”, which contains a mix of images of Havana’s old, classic buildings stacked on top of each other, made a splash in the local art scene. His OpenSea page now reads “404. This page is lost.”

On its website, OpenSea boasts that it is “building an open digital economy” and that users can “trade goods freely”.

García Alarcón began trading NFTs on OpenSea in April 2021, using his first work as a political commentary on the controversial detention of protesting Cuban artists in January of that year. He made $200 from it and went on to sell about 20 more NFTs through the site.

At one point, OpenSea promoted García Alarcón as an artist to watch. But in March last year, he was suddenly banned from his account without explanation.

“They sell you the idea of ​​freedom, that you can show your work, that there is no censorship,” said García Alarcón. “You use the platform to show what you can’t show in your own country, and then this happens.”

When an artist is taken off a platform, the art they sold is also removed from the page. Although NFTs continue to exist on the blockchain and are available to view on other NFT trading sites, artists say it is often seen as a loss by collectors who are confused or want to display their art on more popular platforms.

Although OpenSea has not said why it removed the work of the Cuban artists, it likely has to do with the perceived risk of running afoul of US sanctions. Amid criticism for removing Iranian artists earlier this year, OpenSea told crytocurrency news site Decrypt in March: “We have a zero-tolerance policy for the use of our services by sanctioned individuals or entities and persons located in sanctioned countries.”

The costs of violating sanctions can be high, as the US Treasury Department fined cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex $24 million in October for allowing traders to evade US sanctions in places like Cuba, Syria, Iran and Sudan.

Although the United States has imposed economic sanctions on Cuba for more than six decades, including bans on commercial products such as cigars and rum, these sanctions do not apply to much Cuban art. But in some cases, NFTs have become more of an investment vehicle, selling for tens of millions of dollars during the 2021 boom.

For Gianni D’Alerta, a Cuban-American who has lived in Miami all his life and has never visited the island, the medium was “an opportunity to engage with my culture” and bridge a longstanding divide between Cubans on the island and in Miami.

He is the organizer of NFTcuba.ART, a collective of around 100 Cuban artists around the world. Last week, he received an email from OpenSea that the NFTcuba.ART account was blocked “due to activity that violates our terms of use.”

Artists say they were never told explicitly why their accounts were removed, and when D’Alerta asked for more details, OpenSea responded that they “could not disclose further details,” emails shared with the AP show.

Some artists theorize that the trading platforms may be doing so out of an abundance of caution, though others speculate that people who don’t like what certain artists have to say about Cuba could have created accounts to flag those artists’ profiles.

D’Alerta and other collective leaders told the AP that the bans have even extended to personal accounts of Cuban artists who do not live on the island.

Meanwhile, leaders in the Cuban NFT space are concerned that the deplatforming could have a long-term chilling effect on Cuban digital artists.

Buying NFTs can already be seen as risky due to recent volatility in the cryptocurrency market, as evidenced by the recent collapse of popular cryptocurrency trading platform FTX and the criminal charges against its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.

That could be seen as an even greater risk for those buying from Cuban artists, D’Alerta said, because the art could later disappear from the major platforms.

“It’s heartbreaking and it’s unfortunate,” he said. “It’s another downer, you know. Another acknowledgment that they are not part of the world community. You can’t participate,” is basically what (NTF platforms) are saying.”