With the world becoming more and more digital, how people experience art and how artists create art has become more and more adaptive to digital methods and experiences. 12 June saw a first for Sri Lankan art with tech equipment platform Urban.lk hosting Sri Lanka’s first-ever non-fungible token (NFT) auction.
NFTs are essentially digital tokens that can be assigned to any kind of digital asset, for example, a piece of digital art. NFTs have many applications across the digital world and have, in fact, been used to sell art before. One of the benefits of NFTs is that they are tradeable and can be traced at any time through the blockchain (a digital ledger), including if and when it changes hands.
A unique feature of NFTs with digital art is that after the initial sale of the NFT, the transaction doesn’t end. With each NFT, artists can build in a percentage of how much they will receive from the proceeds of any resale of the NFT after its original sale. With normal transactions, once a piece of art is sold one, the artist receives no benefits from any other sales of that piece of art. With an NFT, however, the artist can receive a percentage of the proceeds every time that NFT is resold.
The NFT art auction organised by Urban.lk on 12 June, took place as part of activities to mark Urban.lk’s fifth year of operations as a quality tech equipment (and newly, art) platform, and as a soft launch of a formal NFT art platform Urban.lk will be launching later in the year. The auction featured the sale of 10 NFTs from different artists and photographers in Urban.lk’s Gallery, a platform launched earlier this year for local artists to reach a wider digital audience.
The highlight of the auction was a piece of digital art by artist Adaash Lanthra (Deluge of Ash) titled “Sigiriya 2077”, a dystopian representation of Sigiriya in a futuristic cyberpunk setting. Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction and gaming that deals with a dystopian futuristic setting that features heavily advanced technology alongside a breakdown or radical change in the social order of the world. The name Sigiriya 2077 draws from the online game Cyberpunk 2077 which is one of the most famous examples of cyberpunk.
Brunch spoke with Urban.lk Founder and Director Kalana Muthumuni on this landmark auction, who shared that the auction was live for 24 hours with the NFTs receiving over 69 bids from a wide community of investment companies, startup founders, and general public. Initially supposed to take place as a physical/digital event in May with the auction of the single NFT for Sigiriya 2077, the event was postponed and held entirely virtually in light of the third wave of Covid-19 infections currently hitting the country. Kalana shared that the team at Urban.lk used this time to make the portfolio of NFTs larger and create a bigger auction experience. “We added extra NFTs because of the extra time given to us because of the lockdown, adding nine more NFTs, all from up-and-coming digital artists in Sri Lanka. All but one of the pieces were auctioned, with each artist having sold at least one piece of work.
We had lots of people get in touch with us asking to put up their work also, and so, before the launch of our NFT platform, we hope to host a couple more auctions like this.”
With minimum bids for each NFT set at $ 50, the auction also saw artists’ work given a minimum value. In the end, the auction raised over $ 2,000, with the focal piece of the auction, Sigiriya 2077, selling for $ 1,275. The auction was held in partnership with the charity Round Table Sri Lanka, with Urban.lk contributing a portion of profit from the auction to Round Table Sri Lanka to support their work with underprivileged children.
Kalana shared that the overall response to the NFT auction has been very encouraging, with it drawing interest from many investment companies and funds, especially those who are interested in cryptocurrency and familiar with NFTs, explaining that NFTs have a lot of interest globally, and people in Sri Lanka are also getting more and more interested. “This was Sri Lanka’s first NFT auction, and it had lots of value in the cryptocurrency community,” he said. 
Kalana shared that the startup ecosystem played a very supportive role in promoting the auction, with many startup founders promoting the auction on their social media, as well as placing bids during the auction. The auction’s focal piece, Sigiriya 2077, was even subject to a bidding war, receiving 32 bids. This said, a lot of the interest (and bids) in the auction came from people who didn’t have any previous knowledge or experience with NFTs and were taken through the process by the Urban.lk team.
Brunch also spoke with the artist behind Sigiriya 2077, Adaash Lanthra (also known as Deluge of Ash), who shared that the auction entirely exceeded his expectations. “I never thought it would exceed about $ 200,” Lanthra said, adding that he kept an eye on the bidding and was overwhelmed by the amount of interest Sigiriya 2077 received.
Lanthra, who has practised his art digitally for some time, was not familiar with the concept of NFTs until Urban.lk approached him to make Sigiriya 2077 for the NFT. “They wanted a landmark from Sri Lanka in a dystopian future. The initial concept was making a dystopian city, but I realised I preferred to pay homage to Sigiriya as an energy source.”
Speaking on the potential of NFTs for artists, Lanthra shared that NFTs are a great platform for artists to monetise their work. “Artists in Sri Lanka have difficulty putting their name out there and selling their pieces,” he shared, adding: “NFTs are a great way to do this. They’re attached to the whole technological development of money like Bitcoin and so on, and with the current trend going, they are basic instincts now. NFTs can definitely develop and give artists ideas to sell their art.”
This auction was the first time Urban.lk dealt with NFTs, and while the NFT market is fairly new, it has gained huge amounts of traction through 2020 and 2021. “The market is very hot right now,” Kalana said, adding: “We want to become the bridge between artists and buyers looking to purchase NFTs.”