Girlies NFTs Seek To Break Gender Barriers In Art

A 14-year-old is using NFTs to increase visibility for women artists.

Girlies is an NFT (non-fungible token that digitally represents any asset) collection from a 14-year-old artist named Valeria. She has created a profile-style picture collection that features an array of girls who boast an assortment of traits.

Race, hairstyle, clothing and jewelry are all part of the collection.

Available at girlies.art, there are currently 10,000 of these generative NFTs.  Mint price is 0.04 ETH cryptocurrency + Gas.

Valeria said her goal is to inspire “women and young girls from all over the world to pursue art and anything they set their mind to.”

Valeria’s NFTs’ site explains the genesis of her work:

“Hey there! My name is Valeria. Ever since I could hold a pencil, I have had a passion for drawing. I’ve tried almost every art medium, from markers to oil paints and watercolors to charcoals, but digital art has always been my favorite.

“The idea for ‘Girlies’ came to us when my dad mentioned an article about women in the NFT space and how only a small percentage of NFTs come from women artists. After learning more about what other women were doing in this space, I was inspired to create my own NFT. However, we quickly found out that generative art isn’t easy. I put in hundreds of hours of work to create over 300 traits, and my dad spent weeks learning about the tech stuff.”

Her vision — to bring awareness to women artists — remains an ongoing effort.

A team of researchers from the Netherlands, Australia and the United States studied over 2.6 million artworks sold at auction from 2000-2017 at 1,800 top auction houses. They found that women are absent from the top strata of art sales, where 42 male artists enjoy 40 percent of sale values. Just one female artist, the American painter Joan Mitchell, cracks the top 50, according to Fast Company.

In addition, 5 percent of the 116,000 artists with work on display at major galleries and up for auction are female. Of those making contemporary art, 9.3 percent are female, while 2.9 percent of “old masters” are female artists, the magazine said.

It had no stats yet for pricing, by gender, in the new world of NFTs and digital art.

Valeria is part of current efforts to bring the representation issue to the public.

A non-digital form of protest regarding female artists began in 1985 with the Guerrilla Girls. The group fights sexism and racism in the art world. By remaining anonymous, wearing only gorilla masks, they hoped to keep the focus on key issues, rather than themselves.

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