NFT Marketplace OpenSea has blocked Cuban artists and collectors from its platform, citing US sanctions law

Internet’s largest NFT marketplace OpenSea removes Cuban artist and collector accounts from its platform to comply with US sanctions law.

Suspicions that OpenSea had specifically targeted Cuban accounts have persisted for the past few months – a stance the New York-headquartered company has in relation to countries such as Venezuela, Iran and Syria – but Artnet News can now confirm that the policy extends to Cuban artists , after an exchange with the platform.

“We comply with US sanctions law,” an OpenSea spokesperson told Artnet News via email. “Our Terms of Service expressly prohibit sanctioned individuals, individuals in sanctioned jurisdictions or services from using OpenSea.”

The development is a blow to Cuban artists who began minting the blockchain during the great NFT boom of early 2021, a time that coincided with the height of pandemic travel restrictions that deprived the island of valuable tourist dollars.

One such artist is Gabriel Bianchini, a photographer whose work has appeared at the Havana Biennale and Milan’s MIA Photo Fair. After learning about NFTs on the social audio app Clubhouse, he was instantly hooked Hotel Havana, a multi-layered image that juxtaposes the capital’s colorful and dilapidated buildings. It sold out in days.

Gabriel Bianchini, Hotel Havana (2020). Photo: courtesy of the artist.

“We were locked in a pandemic, with an increasingly difficult economic, political and social situation,” Bianchini told Artnet News. “This technology was a liberation, not only financially, but also creatively, a bridge that allowed us Cuban artists to connect with the world.”

Bianchini encouraged other Cuban artists to take the digital leap, and a vibrant community duly followed. It stretched from downtown Havana, with local club and gallery Fábrica de Arte Cubano bringing artists online, to the diaspora with groups like Miami-based NFTcuba.ART creating a veritable network.

NFTcuba.ART is now being systematically blocked from a marketplace that receives more than 120 million visitors a month. To date, more than 30 Cuban artists have had their OpenSea accounts removed. The technology underlying NFTs may be transparent and decentralized, but the companies that platform their exchanges are not.

For Cuban artists, OpenSea’s decision is no surprise. It follows a 60-year history of US sanctions against the country, one that has continued into the digital age with the likes of Zoom, MailChimp, WeTransfer and Gitlab all inaccessible from Cuba (sometimes even when using a VPN).

“I saw it coming,” Cuban NFT artist Yordanis García Delgado told Artnet News. “It is very difficult to be decentralized and not be accountable to the authorities, thanks to the blockade that the US maintains against Cuba.”

One point of confusion lies in the fact that OpenSea has quickly turned from celebrating and platforming Cuban artists – they were featured during National Hispanic Heritage Month with Bianchini as co-host – to a general ban, regardless of the user’s other nationalities. Bianchini, for example, is Swiss-Italian, currently lives in Spain, and is the founder of NFTcuba.ART. Gianni D’Alerta lives in the USA

The move is also counterintuitive in that it prevents political messages unwelcome in Cuban galleries from reaching the wider world. That’s a point Ted Henken, a professor at Baruch College who has written extensively about Cuba’s digital culture. “Quite ironically, in this case, those affected both economically and in terms of their free cultural expression are Cuban artists who often use their art to challenge government censorship or critically comment on Cuba’s difficult social and artistic reality,” he said.

So what next for Cuba’s burgeoning NFT art scene? In the short term, Bianchini expects artists to focus on other platforms such as Foundation and SuperRare. Still, he remains optimistic about Web3’s future.

“I’m still betting that this technology will bring freedom to countries like mine,” Bianchini said. “I’m not just talking about economic freedom, but creative freedom and freedom of expression.”

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