‘It's not something I ever did to be controversial’, says Andres Serrano of his 1987 photograph Piss Christ, which has become canonical as the foremost example of transgressive art. ‘I just did it to be myself’.
From 30 November through 7 December, Christie’s 3.0 debuts ‘Piss Christ (Original)’, the first non-fungible token by Serrano, as part of Next Wave: The Miami Edit. The NFT was produced in collaboration with a/political, an organization dedicated to the support and promotion of artists working within a socio-political framework.
Serrano is particularly interested in the time-based and mutable nature of NFTs which, in the case of ‘Piss Christ (Original)’, replicate the three events of vandalism to the photograph in 1989, 1997 and 2011. Now immortalized on the blockchain, the work runs on a yearly cycle and is protected from further vandalism. The digital artwork is from an edition of five unique color variants, of which the present lot is number one, and matches the vivid orange colour of the original, iconic photograph.
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Next Wave: The Miami Edit | 30 November - 7 December