Meet the artist who just launched Christie’s new platform for NFT sales

Renowned visual artist Diana Sinclair’s first solo exhibition serves as the launch pad for Christie’s 3.0, the auction house’s new platform for in-chain NFT sales. Phasesa curated auction of nine NFTs, is currently open for bidding through October 11th and on display at Christie’s New York galleries through October 5th.

Christie’s 3.0 – which enables all transactions, including post-sale processing, to be fully automated and on the blockchain – is a technological first for the industry and represents an important step in auction houses’ role in developing digital art. Equally important, says Lesley Silverman, who heads the Web3 division of United Talent Agency, which signed Sinclair across the board and brokered the deal with Christie’s, is the artist they chose to launch with.

“This for Christie’s is a big step in the right direction, but I think it’s only going to be a step in the right direction if they align themselves with artists who are paradigm-shifting,” says Silverman. “The artist they chose to elevate, in this case, Diana – that’s a real statement. She is a once-in-a-generation artist who embraces the doorway that the blockchain opened for digital art in the last couple of years.”

In fact, Sinclair’s work is far from the likes of an animated and boring primate. The 18-year-old is passionate about work that explores self-identity and social justice, and her art reflects both a deep curiosity and introspection, and an ethos wise beyond her years. It’s a trait that has propelled her to NFT stardom over the past year.

In June 2021, she became one of the youngest curators of digital art with Digital diaspora, a Juneteenth exhibition and auction celebrating the work of black artists working within the NFT community. Soon after, a collaboration came along Time magazine and a project with the Whitney Houston estate, for which she created an NFT with never-before-seen video footage of Houston that sold for close to $1 million.

“It meant a lot to me because of the kind of person Whitney Houston was,” she says. “I was able to sit down and talk to her family. They felt very connected to me as a person and an artist, so it was a special relationship that I was able to develop because they felt that what I was doing this time resonated with the way Whitney was in her time. It was like this cross-generational connection with the same, I think, core values ​​as artists and women.”

Sinclair describes Phases as an exploration of impermanence, the flow of life and the human experience of time – concepts that she has struggled with most of her life and which bubbled up again just as she explored Christie’s partnership.

“It happened earlier this year when I had started to fall into a phase of depression again. I feel like I’ve lost a lot of time with my depression and potentially taken myself off the path I should have been on. And I decided to this time instead of just letting it happen and potentially stopping the path I was on with Christie’s, I wanted to sit down and process the core of why for most of my life I’ve had this very strange relationship with time and finitude, and not really being able to come to terms with it, she says.

“It started to change how I approached the project, and then this obscure thought was translated into visual elements that I have to work backwards from. That’s how it always goes. Everything I’m feeling now I can see visually, but then it’s going to be working backwards to figure out how to make it happen on set on camera.”

Launching Christie’s 3.0, for Sinclair, has implications that are both far-reaching and deeply personal.

“The fact that one of the biggest auction houses is building out a platform and selling digital art through the blockchain represents a huge shift in how the world is going to look at digital art. In the future, it will help lead to the steps to see digital art become taught in universities and other schools, says Sinclair.

“And as an artist who has family members who were also black and who were also women and who were denied in the arts, to be in this position now — I’ve talked a lot with my family about how important it is to be part of the shift in the art world , but also that representation.

“And the blockchain provenance thing is cool. There are so many black people in history whose contributions to the world have been dismissed or not properly recorded, but because of my collaboration with Christie’s and the way it happened, it’s going to to be on the blockchain forever,” she notes. “So there’s been a moment where I’ve sat and felt that surreality. I’ve definitely cried about it a few times.”

“By launching Christie’s 3.0, we hope to bring new artistic voices to the worldwide Christie’s scene – and highlight the best of the best digital art to collectors worldwide,” said Nicole Sales Giles, Business Director, Digital Art, at Christie’s. “Diana Sinclair’s Work in Phases and her career in general is the perfect representation of this. Her work is introspective, inspiring and relatable.”

UTA’s digital artist roster includes compilations from Deadfellaz and MV3, and web3 artists Emonee LaRussa and Vinnie Hager.

“The core of who Diana is as an artist will touch so many areas that make up our agency in the months and years to come,” says Silverman. “What I love most is when our customers cross-pollinate their talent with each other.”